The series premiered on BBC Four in March 2011, timed to coincide with the 500-day countdown to the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.

The show's final episode aired on 24 July 2012, just three days before the real opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games.

Several core characters, including Ian Fletcher and Siobhan Sharpe, later reappeared in the 2014 sequel W1A, following their new careers at the BBC.

Hugh Bonneville reprised his role as Ian Fletcher decades later in a further sequel titled Twenty Twenty Six, this time centered on preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The day after episode one aired, featuring a storyline about problems with a countdown clock, the real-life countdown clock in Trafalgar Square broke shortly after being launched by Lord Coe and London mayor Boris Johnson.

In another life-imitates-art moment, real Olympic athletes arriving in London experienced bus drivers getting lost and unable to find the Olympic Park, closely mirroring the plot of episode two.

The show faced plagiarism accusations from John Clarke, writer of the Australian mockumentary The Games (set before the 2000 Sydney Olympics), who claimed the British team had had long conversations with his group before creating a similar show; the BBC denied the claims.

Real Olympics chief Lord Seb Coe made a cameo appearance in the series, which several critics highlighted as a notably self-deprecating move for such a high-profile figure to participate in.