Robert Webb

Ambassadors, BBC Two, ep3, review

The script for BBC Two's Ambassadors manages to make David Mitchell and Robert Webb significantly less funny than they are in real life, says Andrew Pettie.

Mitchell and Webb's diplomatic comedy drama goes out with a bang as revolting Tazbeks tangle with presidential armed forces.

British ambassador Keith Davis (David Mitchell) is whimpering on the neutral sidelines but luckily for the oppressed locals, wife Jennifer (Keeley Hawes) has enough empathy to make up for her husband and does what she can to rally support for the humanitarian cause.

As for deputy Neil Tilly (Robert Webb), he's got his hands full with a fierce Foreign Office interrogation specialist on a mission to ferret out spies in high places.

A flinty government vetting officer turns up at the British Embassy in Tazbekistan. He's so tough he walked from the airport 15 miles away and is barely perturbed by the fact that the country is in the grip of revolution.

As the power fails and shots ring through the night air, British ambassador Keith Davis and his deputy Neil Tilly (David Mitchell and Robert Webb) have to think on their feet. Someone has to suck up to the president's monstrous daughter, a primped, plastic surgery-obsessed brute with her own wine label; while Keith has to make peace with the insurgents, though they are late for a rendezvous: "You can't expect punctuality from rebels," he says with true British grit. "They are rebels, aren't they?"

It's been an engaging series; I hope it returns.

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Ambassadors is the low-key acerbic comedy drama set in a British embassy in the fictional central Asian country of Tazbekistan. The first episode had some tonal problems as it struggled to establish whether it wanted to be funny or clever, and often failed to achieve either.

But it was OK, and at times mildly amusing, which already put it out in front of most of the competition. That said, you expect better than occasionally mildly amusing from David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who maintained a level of demented brilliance in Peep Show for years.

And in the second episode they were indeed much better. Some of the improvement could be attributed to a wonderful turn by Tom Hollander as an obnoxious prince who stumbles luxuriously around the globe as a trade envoy creating international crises - a great comic idea, and one wonders who could possibly have been its inspiration.

More than that, though, it was a matter of characters falling into place and the place finding its character. Webb is oddly convincing as a cynical idealist assistant to the ambassador, and Mitchell shows a conflicted steeliness and sensitivity that goes some way beyond his stock gift for the florid rant.

The writing, by James Wood and Rupert Walters, was sharper too. Several plot strands were neatly combined, and there was an impressive resistance - as shown with the Prince Mark storyline - to succumbing to the obvious. Rather than bash you over the head with jokes, it takes a more diplomatic approach. And I don't care what Steve Coogan says about him, Mitchell has persuaded me on this one.

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The public pseudo-conversation between celebrities such as Robert Webb and Russell Brand is excruciating.

Rev. star Tom Hollander effectively steals the show from under the noses of the two leads when he guests as Prince Mark, a minor royal who's been invited to Tazbekistan to grease the wheels for another trade agreement.

Prince Mark, we learn, always travels with a 6ft ironing board carried by his loyal male assistant called Treasure.

This is the easy stuff and it's a shame Ambassadors isn't content to just go straight for the comedy jugular.

Goodness knows it's got all the right ingredients in Robert Webb and David Mitchell, while the two secret police spies eavesdropping on all their conversations are sweetly hilarious.

Instead we're asked to wade through storylines about escaped human rights protesters, enforced child labour and threats to murder women and scatter their chopped up remains in the woods.

Things like that do tend to wipe the smile right off your face.

Tonight's opening scene in which Neil Tilly (Webb) is kidnapped and a sack pulled over his head - for laughs - is an example of the impossible balancing act Ambassadors has set itself.

The British Embassy in Tazbekistan prepares for the arrival of Prince Mark, a trade envoy and minor member of the royal family. He turns out to be a spoilt, entitled berk (a great comic turn from Tom Hollander) who travels everywhere with a 6ft ironing board so his factotum can ensure the creases in the Prince's trousers are perfect.

Though Ambassadors feels a shade underwritten and falls uncomfortably between drama and comedy (that tricky middle ground is always a hard place to sit), it bowls along thanks to a sharp cast - David Mitchell and Robert Webb play the ambassador and his capable deputy, and there's a great foul-mouthed cameo from Matthew Macfadyen as their furious government boss.

And Frasier fans, watch out for Edward Hibbert (restaurant critic Gil Chesterton) as an equerry.

While last week's tepid opener failed to prove either way whether Ambassadors could make foreign affairs funny, it's case closed by the end of this direly unfunny middle episode.

Tonight sees British ambassadors Keith (David Mitchell) and Neil (Robert Webb) forced to babysit a visiting prince (well played by Tom Hollander), while negotiating oil-drilling rights with the premier of their fictional Tazbekistan. Hilarity does not ensue. Aimed squarely at fans of The Thick of It, Ambassadors delivers precisely none of the nuanced comedy and Kafka-esque scenarios.

Given the highbrow subject matter, there's an awful lot of physical daftness, including a tiresome skit in which Hollander's prince berates a blind person while - wait for it! - not realising he's blind. The central duo don't add much, either. It's as if writers Rupert Walters and James Wood had hoped the Peep Show boys would ad-lib all the funny bits, only to find out they couldn't be arsed. By the end of this, neither will you be.

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