Asylum (2015 TV series)

Asylum
Genre	Comedy
Created by	Kayvan Novak and Tom Thostrup
Written by	Peter Bowden & Thom Phipps
Directed by	Iain B. MacDonald
Starring	Ben Miller; Kayvan Novak; Niky Wardley; Yasmine Akram
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	3
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC Four (United Kingdom)
Original release	9 February –; 23 February 2015

Asylum is a British comedy series which is shown on BBC Four from 9 to 23 February 2015. The satirical comedy series revolves around a whistleblower and an internet pirate find themselves trapped together under the threat of extradition in the London embassy of a fictional Latin American country. The show was inspired by Julian Assange’s two-year stay in the Ecuadorian embassy[1] and the controversial entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.[2] The show was initially conceived by fonejacker star, Kayvan Novak and Tom Thostrup, before being written by Thom Phipps and Peter Bowden.[3]

Controversy

One of the writers of the series Thom Phipps once called for the police to publicly shoot the Wikileaks founder in the head. On the day Julian Assange was given political asylum, by the government of Ecuador, Phipps tweeted: 'If the met [police] want to regain my trust they should drag Assange out the embassy + shoot him in the back of th head in the middle of traf square.' A complaint was lodged with the BBC over its decision to employ Phipps on the basis that he 'advocated for the public extrajudicial assassination' of the Wikileaks founder. The BBC's response was that: 'Unfortunately Mr Philip's [sic] is not a BBC member of staff and is not representing the BBC. Therefore we will not be commenting on Twitter posts made by third parties.' [4]

The series has yet to be released on DVD.

Cast and crew

Written by Thom Phipps and Peter Bowden

Principal cast and characters

Ben Miller as Dan Hern
Kayvan Novak as Rafael
Niky Wardley as Lorna
Yasmine Akram as Rosa
Dustin Demri-Burns as Ludo Backslash
John Guerrasio as Mo
Darrell D'Silva as Castillo
David Cross as Juan Pablo
Ayo Mary Laurent as Mary

Episodes

#	Title	Directed By	Written By	Original air date
1	"Strange Bedfellows"	Iain B. MacDonald	Peter Bowden & Thom Phipps	9 February 2015 (2015-02-09)
After a year in the El Rican embassy under the threat of arrest and a death sentence by the US, after whistleblowing CIA cover ups, Dan is bored. With little hope of getting out, Dan prepares for a newspaper interview, hoping that he will be able to leave the embassy. However the embassy want to attract people to the embassy ball, but Dan is old news and nobody wants to come. So the embassy bring in another international criminal- internet pirate Ludo Backslash to bunk with Dan.
2	"Project Siren"	Iain B. MacDonald	Peter Bowden & Thom Phipps	16 February 2015 (2015-02-16)
MI6 try to lure Dan out of the embassy by setting up an online dating site trap. Meanwhile the CIA have placed a mole in the embassy who is leaking staff secrets and framing Dan for it. Ludo is eagerly awaiting for his birthday and expecting a surprise party, but things have to be put on hold as MI6 and the CIA draw closer to Dan
3	"Public Relations"	Iain B. MacDonald	Peter Bowden & Thom Phipps	23 February 2015 (2015-02-23)
Dan decides to raise his public profile and promote his manifesto by holding a press conference. However he accidentally claims that the El Ricans are torturing him, which damages their world cup bid. The El Rican foreign minister is called out to persuade Dan to apologise. But with his new world popularity, Dan is not so keen.

gollark: I'd seen citrons say that sort of thing, and coupled with the APIARIES, my knowledge of their socket programming knowledge in blattidus, and their programming style, it was obviously citronic.

gollark: Next time I should have GPT-3 generate comments for me.

gollark: baidicoot talks about continuation passing style a lot and it seemed applicable since my interpreter can tail recurse.

gollark: And actually I just looked at some haskell posts on reddit to learn about the CPS quicksort implementation.

gollark: I have *used* Haskell, and I know the syntax, I'm just not very good at it.

References

Raeside, Julia. "Asylum review: it could be a good sitcom if you could believe any of it". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
Wilson, Benji (9 February 2015). "Asylum, episode 1, review: 'boring'". Retrieved 21 February 2015.
"Asylum - BBC4 Sitcom - British Comedy Guide". British Comedy Guide. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
"Fury over BBC writer's 'kill Assange' tweet". Retrieved 30 January 2015.

External links

Asylum at BBC Programmes
Asylum on IMDb

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[1] Raeside, Julia. "Asylum review: it could be a good sitcom if you could believe any of it". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 February 2015.

[2] Wilson, Benji (9 February 2015). "Asylum, episode 1, review: 'boring'". Retrieved 21 February 2015.

[3] "Asylum - BBC4 Sitcom - British Comedy Guide". British Comedy Guide. Retrieved 11 February 2015.

[4] "Fury over BBC writer's 'kill Assange' tweet". Retrieved 30 January 2015.