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I don't normally write reviews of a BBC television dramas unless I feel particularly provoked one way or the other. Unfortunately it was because of my in-credulousness of how poor this program was. I actually found it hard to watch and certainly impossible to take seriously. The plot centres around a PR woman travelling to Nigeria to work for an oil company who's employees are regularly kidnapped or worse. Perhaps this could have been an interesting scenario. It wasn't.

Everyone is a caricature. In the opening scene the oil workers storm through a village in their Land Rovers knocking over people's property on the way- like cartoon villains. I was watching this scene with a guy who's worked for many years for a blue chip company in Nigeria who scoffed loudly at this. No foreign company acts in this disrespectful, provocative way.

Linking into this is the acting- it was atrocious- like watching actors who speak their lines like extras in a school play- seriously it was that unnatural. The kidnapped oil worker's wife spends her entire screen time crying at full volume and generally acting pathetically. Whilst our PR heroine gives almost a smug performance- acting incredibly inappropriately in certain scenes. For example instead of comforting the , albeit OTT-ly, distraught wife- she casually remarks along the lines of 'kinapping happens all the time here, don't worry' and then proceeds to sip a cocktail by the pool and make pleasantries with the hotel manager. The whole thing seemed staggeringly unnatural as did many other scenes- including the actor who plays 'Johnson' from Peep Show sporting a ridiculous American accent which was almost as funny as the, intentionally hilarious, boss he plays in Peep Show.

The disappointing thing is that there was clearly a big budget for this. But how any of this- the script, acting and direction could have been green lighted is a mystery. In a nutshell- if you want to look at Africa through the lens of a shallow soap opera production then this will be your thing. For a well acted and directed conspiracy drama set in the continent check out 'The Constant Gardner' instead.

As another viewer commented, this feature length production is pretty empty- both of story and characters. The two leads are both very irritating and have no real depth to them. How she ever becomes attached to him is never really shown. The only scenes they share are ones in which she is reprimanding him for some minor incident. In fact the only thing they ever do together at work is a colour coded file system, constantly viewed as some work of genius. She even later calls him her mentor- though we never see him teach her anything. Paul isn't half as enigmatic as he is made out to be either.

All Friends and Crocodiles is, is a succession of shots of grand parties against the backdrop of the 1980s/1990s (with the obligatory brick mobile phone joke). There's a vague sense of whimsy about the story but it all feels rather forced. We never cared about these characters in the first place- so when their various falls from grace and rises to fortune happen, as an audience we just don't care.

I'm sure the writer/directors other work is all very worth watching (like the 'The Lost Prince' for instance), and whilst 'Friends and Crocodiles' all looks similarly lavish and picturesque there is really nothing at all to it.

My Dad summed it up perfectly as the credits rolled- 'Pathetic'