Eccles Cake is no Ferrero Rocher
Oct. 24th, 2013 07:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessAmbassadors ep. 1 Enjoyed this enough to decide I'd watch the next episode, even before I realised it would involve Tom Hollander ruin future chances of a knighthood.
It's a satirical comedy-drama, although I only went beyond snickering to laugh outright at the terrible performance of Frankenstein by the bad actor. David Mitchell is Keith (see, snickering), the new UK Ambassador to Tazbekistan and Robert Webb is Neil, his deputy, who's been in country for a while. There's a weird meta tension that they're such a well-known double act playing people who don't know each other.
They're supported by very competent but different young ladies at the consulate, and although Neil has a relationship with a Tazbeki local, he seemed to have various levels of chemistry with all of them, especially, for me, Susan Lynch's hard-bitten on the outside colleague. Neil interested me more than Keith for various reasons, really, although we did get to see Keith's negotiating skills, showing that he wasn't totally bumbling, and he got two real rants, which are very much Mitchell's schtick.
Tazbekistan sounds like it appeared on Spooks, which is something I thought before I fully grasped that Keeley Hawes and (a cameoing) Matthew MacFayden were in it.
I don't know if it will get the balance right of tone and focus throughout its run. There are probably enough women around - and having the US ambassador be a woman was astute - and Mitchell and Webb are likeable enough that it's interesting to watch them in more dramatic territory. I never watched Peep Show, I know them more from other stuff.
It's a satirical comedy-drama, although I only went beyond snickering to laugh outright at the terrible performance of Frankenstein by the bad actor. David Mitchell is Keith (see, snickering), the new UK Ambassador to Tazbekistan and Robert Webb is Neil, his deputy, who's been in country for a while. There's a weird meta tension that they're such a well-known double act playing people who don't know each other.
They're supported by very competent but different young ladies at the consulate, and although Neil has a relationship with a Tazbeki local, he seemed to have various levels of chemistry with all of them, especially, for me, Susan Lynch's hard-bitten on the outside colleague. Neil interested me more than Keith for various reasons, really, although we did get to see Keith's negotiating skills, showing that he wasn't totally bumbling, and he got two real rants, which are very much Mitchell's schtick.
Tazbekistan sounds like it appeared on Spooks, which is something I thought before I fully grasped that Keeley Hawes and (a cameoing) Matthew MacFayden were in it.
I don't know if it will get the balance right of tone and focus throughout its run. There are probably enough women around - and having the US ambassador be a woman was astute - and Mitchell and Webb are likeable enough that it's interesting to watch them in more dramatic territory. I never watched Peep Show, I know them more from other stuff.
