I think, Mr Snarkos, that mining the deep vein of humourous situations for asylum-seekers from Yemen and DRC now living in Scunthorpe is rather what the BEEB had hoped for. You know how it is when you have to live as a family of 4 on GBP35 of food vouchers a week in accommodation supervised by people who are contractually obliged to turn you in if your wife's brother suddenly arrives from Overseas wanting to sleep under one of the beds. The running sores on his back from CIA torture sessions and the condition of his feet won't qualify him for status as a refugee [Immigration Tribunal Decisions: "...your evidence is disbelieved..." always gets a laugh], and will in fact get the entire family into trouble.
Key comedy highlights occur as the family scurry round gathering up their possessions at 6 one morning, as they are being turned out by Home Office heavies and carted off to detention centres - along with the cheese grater and empty toothpaste tubes they have confusedly brought along for the ride - ready to put back on a plane home, where their torturers will be able to greet them at their destination, repeatedly rape the little girls and their mother and do unspeakable damage to the father and his unfortunate, visiting, relative.
A happy-family ending, rich with the promise of many more cheerful episodes, is arrived at in 30 minutes only, as the wife is now pregnant again and on a plane to Glasgow, where she will seek - yet again - asylum and refugee status in Great Britain. The next episode will develop the cute situations which arise as she valiantly (she's Catholic) gives birth to her rapist's child, born a UK citizen, after having been refused pre-natal care by an ignorant jobsworth from the local authority and her labour and brithing process used as hands-on training for junior interns who, later in life and from their Harley Street rooms, recall jokingly the twists and turns of an awesome birthing mishap which they luckily were able to cover up. [The working title for this episode is "Another Brit Born Brain-Dead!"]
In a later episode and quite by chance, we meet the little girls in an army camp high in the hills of Afghanistan, cheerfully singing Irish sea shanties as they entertain British troops. Comedy effects arise from the contrasts between their childish, pregnant strip-tease and the words of the songs: bump and gind on "drun-ken sai-lor", etc., etc. Regular mock-up Maily Dale FP's nipping at their heels enhance these comedy moments. Themes such as "Workshy Teen Prostitutes Duck School In Afghanistan!", etc., etc. keep the pot boiling as the next hilarious episode is quietly set up.
The series is designed to provide a quick, effortless tour of the last 30 years' Foreign Policy in a manner which leaves the intellect unchallenged, and gets a few homespun truths through to...erm, well: whoever's watching.
