Ambassadors

I have never been tempted to write a review before, but was roused into action when I heard that this series only had three episodes and there are no plans for any more.

I think this is the best comedy I have seen since Episodes. There were many times when I laughed out loud. Each week my girlfriend and I eagerly looked forward to the next installment

This was intelligently written and very funny. It centres around the ambassador and his right-hand man, the ambassador's wife and a small group of staff at embassy. It comes across a quintessentially British bumbling around in a foreign country trying to grasp a strange culture. As someone well travelled, I would normally hate that approach but credit to the excellent writing. This kept me entertained with mild plots and lots of laugher.

I will be recommending this to all my friends especially ex-pats that are always looking for gems of British TV and British comedy.

This is a very fine TV show. If it weren't for fools who admire shows based on daily hospital routines and cops with boring lives that investigate repetitive murders; then unique and rare brilliance such as this would exist in today's TV show listings.

However, boring people are the majority of judges in ratings; therefore they rate those boring shows and inspire them to make at least a dozen series within their lifespan.

Unfortunate excellence such as Ambassadors, Kingpin, Hung, The Honorable Woman, and many more don't get a chance to cause greater impression in following series than they already had in their first season showing.

As a former member of the British Diplomatic Service I found this series ticked a lot of boxes. I recognised a number of the characterisations as being similar to people I had come across in my own career, and the balance of realistic scenarios and humour was cleverly done. I found myself empathising with several of the characters in the Embassy who struggled to maintain a semblance of normal life amid conflicting, usually urgent and sometimes dangerous, calls on their time. Reviewer journalist1 clearly has a different interpretation of "politically correct" than me. The programme deliberately poked fun at institutions and individuals, from the British Royal Family to the ruling clique of the semi-fictitious country where it is set. Of course there were errors - the Union Jack regularly being flown upside down, for example, something that the producers should really have got right - and it had to be a bit "over-the-top" to be funny, but overall it was an amusing but realistic peek into the world of modern diplomacy at the day-to-day level. I hope there will be another series.

It was a nice surprise to stumble upon AMBASSADORS because I am such a fan of Mitchell & Webb - their sketch show and then PEEP SHOW are both terrific. What was refreshing was that the tone and pace and humor in AMBASSADORS is very different from their previous stuff. This show is like a mix of Yes, Minister, Veep and In The Loop. What is also impressive is the superb supporting cast - Keely Hawes, Matthew MacFayden, Tom Hollander, Amara Karan, Susan Lynch and Shivani Ghai. Don't expect the raunchy, will comedy of their sketch show/Peep Show. This is engaging, smart, measured and there are certainly laughs.

I tend to have a short attention span, but I watched all three episodes back to back. Highly recommended although unexpectedly serious and definitely not Peep Show.

It's a new genre for Mitchell and a Webb and I think they pull it off really well despite the fact that you're waiting for those side glances from Webb at the end of his scenes. Budgets looked fairly big as it seemed all to be shot in Turkey or surrounding regions. Therefore I hope the mixed reviews don't affect a decision about follow up shows.... I'm hoping they make a second series which I think will learn from the first, and will see the characters mature and grow further.