Ben Miller’s Dan Hern, a pompous ex-civil servant who leaked CIA cover-ups, has spent a year mouldering in the El Rican embassy; his only shot at freedom is a Guardian interview that nobody plans to read. To revive flagging interest in the annual embassy ball, the ambassador’s son imports Dustin Demri-Burns’ Ludo Backslash, a loud, infantile file-sharing mogul, and parks him in Dan’s tiny bedroom. The odd-couple cruelty drives the plot: MI6 builds a dating-site honeytrap, the CIA slips a mole beneath the roof, and Dan’s desperate press-conference gaffe torpedoes El Rico’s World Cup bid.
Writers Thom Phipps and Peter Bowden modelled the pair on Julian Assange and Kim Dotcom, but critics called the result “boring” and “just not funny enough”. Controversy flared when Phipps’s 2012 tweet urging police to “shoot Assange in the back of th head” resurfaced; the BBC dismissed him as a third-party contractor. Directed by Iain B. MacDonald, the half-hour episodes ran on BBC Four from 9 to 23 February 2015 and have never been released on DVD.
Production Details
BBC Four / 1 Season / 3 Episodes / 2015
Created by: Kayvan Novak, Tom Thostrup
Writer(s): Peter Bowden & Thom Phipps
Main Cast
Ben Miller as Daniel Hern
Dustin Demri-Burns as Ludo Backslash
Kayvan Novak as Rafael
Darrell D'Silva as Castillo
Yasmine Akram as Rosa
Niky Wardley as Lorna
John Guerrasio as Mo
Stephen Parker as Tall Journalist
