Ambassadors (TV series)
| Ambassadors | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Also known as | 'Our Men' |
| Genre |
|
| Written by |
|
| Directed by | Jeremy Webb |
| Starring | |
| Composer(s) | Daniel Pemberton |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English Russian"Tazbek" |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 3 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) |
|
| Producer(s) | Chris Carey |
| Location(s) |
|
| Editor(s) | Chrispin Green |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Production company(s) | |
| Distributor | BBC Worldwide |
| Release | |
| Original network | |
| Picture format | 16:9 1080i |
| Audio format | Stereo |
| Original release | 23 October – 6 November 2013 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
| Production website | |
Ambassadors is a three-part British comedy-drama television series that ran on BBC Two in 2013. Ambassadors follows the lives of the employees of the British embassy in the fictional Central Asian nation of Tazbekistan.
On 23 August 2012, BBC Two's controller Janice Hadlow announced the commissioning of the television series, by herself and Cheryl Taylor, the controller of BBC comedy commissioning. The series went into production in January 2013.
Robert Webb said: "It's sort of Yes, Prime Minister meets Spooks at a bad disco".David Mitchell said: "It's credible, hopefully funny at times, but serious at times. It was very nice to do something in a slightly different genre. It was nice to do a bit of acting alongside all my sitting in a sparkly chair telling a joke."
Part of the series was filmed in Bursa in western Turkey. According to AZ Celtic Films, Bursa was chosen because of its diversity and closeness to Istanbul, which is called the "hub of the film industry". The series received help from the Turkish military and the local airport, where filming took two days. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) allowed the cast to run a read-through in one of its grandest rooms.
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" and that a week was spent in Kazakhstan with the Ambassador there. According to Craig Murray, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Big Talk Productions tried to buy the rights to his book, Murder in Samarkand, for a film and believes the series, a "state-sponsored satire", is based on it. In his opinion, the FCO had backed it to "defuse the horror of our alliance with Uzbekistan and make it banal, accepted and safe". The writers rejected his assertion concerning plagiarism.
...
Wikipedia