Ambassadors (TV Series)

Having returned from Washington DC, where I spent several days in the National Archives researching a largely-forgotten Cold War campaign (which could have been the subject of satirical comedy if it hadn't been so tragic), I've just caught up with Episode One of this BBC series, Ambassadors

James Wood, the co-writer of the series said "The stories we were told by diplomats were very closely reflected in the series. We ended up with 200 pages of research" (Wikipedia).

Which diplomats invented or related some of the more scurrilous stories and satirical slurs?

Episode One ("sitcom") very amusing in places, apart from some unsubtly exaggerated parody and dated stereotypes, which might have come straight out of Olivia Manning, Malcolm Bradbury - or the early 1950s Beaverbrook Press.

Episode Two ("serious drama") vastly more entertaining. With this episode, "It really started to motor", wrote Clive James.

Three episodes, all currently available on BBC iPlayer

From The Independent:

"The Foreign Office is turning to satire to improve its image after assisting David Mitchell and Robert Webb to create a new BBC comedy series which portrays the fraught world of the diplomatic service.

Set in the oil-rich, fictional Central Asian Republic of Tazbekistan, Mitchell plays the newly arrived British Ambassador and Robert Webb his seasoned second in command in Ambassadors, screened on BBC Two this month.

Created by the team behind Rev, the series writers were given access to senior Foreign Office officials and spent a week with the British ambassador to Kazakhastan to help add authenticity to the comedy-drama...

The Foreign Office opened its doors to the production team and invited the cast to stage a read-through in one of its grandest rooms. James Wood, co-writer, said: “The stories we were told by diplomats were very closely reflected in the series. We ended up with 200 pages of research. We had an amazing week in Kazakhstan with the Ambassador there.”

More   Mitchell... observes that, "I'm very surprised that there haven't been about eight different series set in embassies, ranging from a big studio sitcom with lots of laughs to a very serious drama and everything in between."

"We're going to try every genre in this series," chips in 41-year-old Webb, in characteristic fashion. "Episode one is a sitcom, episode two is a serious drama, and it all ends in parody."
From The Telegraph

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