Synopsis

Created at the height of the Cold War, this BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 Radio 4 sitcom chronicled the vagaries of diplomatic life in a fictitious eastern-bloc country. Dinsdale Landen

Dinsdale Landen

Dinsdale James Landen was a British actor known mainly for his television appearances.Landen was born at Margate. He made his television debut in 1959 as Pip in an adaptation of Great Expectations and made his film debut in 1960, with a walk-on part in The League of Gentlemen...

 starred as the British ambassador, with Peter Acre and Moir Leslie as his assistants, and Stephen Greif

Stephen Greif

Stephen Greif is an award-winning English actor.His television appearances include Waking the Dead , Spooks , Mistresses 2 , He Kills Coppers , Holby City , The Last Days of Pompeii as Sporus, Judge John Deed , Space Race , EastEnders , The Bill and...

 as the US Ambassador.

Later series moved with the times as the country embraced perestroika

Perestroika

Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

.

Regular Cast

• Ambassador McKenzie - Dinsdale Landen
• William Frost - Peter Acre
• Helen Waterson - Moir Leslie
• United States Ambassador - Stephen Greif
• Colonel Surikov - Christopher Benjamin

Episode list

Series	Episode	Title	First broadcast	Additional cast
1	1	Favours	20 April 1987	Brown - Milton Johns Milton Johns Milton Johns is an English actor whose thin features and talent for obsequious or oily characters has often influenced the many television parts he has received. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.Johns was born in Bristol... , Bryant - Stuart Organ Stuart Organ Stuart Organ is a British actor.He is best known for his portrayal of the character Mr. Robson in the children's television drama Grange Hill. Stuart portrayed the series' longest-serving teacher, arriving in 1988 as the new head of PE...
	2	Weather Problems	27 April 1987	Yakov Korovin - Michael Bilton Michael Bilton Michael Bilton was an English actor best known for his roles in the British television sitcoms To the Manor Born and Waiting for God.... , Mikhail Korovin - Jonathan Kydd Jonathan Kydd (actor) Jonathan Kydd is a British actor. He is the son of the actor Sam Kydd.His first film was The Iron Maiden, in which he appeared aged six with his father. His mother, Pinkie, was one of England's first female advertising copywriters. She also played table tennis eleven times for England.Kydd was...
	3	Notes From The Underground	4 May 1987	Yakov Korovin - Michael Bilton Michael Bilton Michael Bilton was an English actor best known for his roles in the British television sitcoms To the Manor Born and Waiting for God.... , Eugenia - Sue Broomfield
	4	Compromising Positions	11 May 1987	Mrs Poonskey - Margaret Ward
	5	Here In The Western World	18 May 1987	Yakov Korovin - Michael Bilton Michael Bilton Michael Bilton was an English actor best known for his roles in the British television sitcoms To the Manor Born and Waiting for God.... , Mikhail Korovin - Jonathan Kydd Jonathan Kydd (actor) Jonathan Kydd is a British actor. He is the son of the actor Sam Kydd.His first film was The Iron Maiden, in which he appeared aged six with his father. His mother, Pinkie, was one of England's first female advertising copywriters. She also played table tennis eleven times for England.Kydd was...
	6	Spy Story	25 May 1987	Mrs Newton - Susie Brann, George Summers - Peter Howell Peter Howell (actor) Peter Howell is a British actor.A regular in 1950s television hospital drama series Emergency Ward 10, he has made guest appearances in The Avengers, The Prisoner, and Doctor Who. He played the prison governor in the 1979 film Scum. He played Saruman in the 1981 BBC Radio production of The Lord of...
2	1	The Bread And Butter	10 March 1988	Harris - Stephen Rashbrook
	2	The Space Race	17 March 1988	Olaf - David Goodland
	3	A Tooth For A Tooth	24 March 1988
	4	The Opium Of The People	31 March 1988	Morris - John Baddely John Baddeley (actor) Edward John Baddeley is a British actor. Apart from his work in the theatre in the provinces and the West End, he is also notable for his work with the BBC and as voice-over artist...
	5	No Sudden Moves	7 April 1988	(Information not currently available)
	6	Political Flu	14 April 1988	Shelkov - Paul Gregory, Nesterov - Peter Craze Peter Craze Peter Craze is a British actor. He is the brother of actor Michael Craze. He has had many film and television appearances including in Doctor Who, EastEnders and Blake's 7.He is the principal at Drama Studio London....
	7	A Taste Of Democracy	21 April 1988	Frank Burton MP - Alan Dudley, Gerald Calder-Browne MP - Richard Tate
	8	Submarine Diplomacy	28 April 1988	Captain Warner - David Goodland
3	1	Whose Rubbish Is It Anyway?	20 November 1990
	2	Our Own Correspondent	27 November 1990	Henry Treebling - John Grieve John Grieve (actor) John Grieve was a Scottish actor, best known as the engineer Macphail in the 1970s BBC adaptation of Neil Munro's Para Handy stories, The Vital Spark....
	3	The Comrade Connection	4 December 1990
	4	A Loss Of Marbles	11 December 1990
	5	Cool Heads	18 December 1990	Hutchins - Norman Bird Norman Bird Norman Bird was a British character actor. Often sporting a moustache and an air of worried resignation, he seemed to specialise in downtrodden roles...
	6	Cultural Exchange	25 December 1990	Grub - Julian Dutton Julian Dutton Julian Dutton is an English comedy writer and performer, principally for television and radio, whose work has won a British Comedy Award and a BAFTA....
4	1	Spiritual Values	16 June 1992	(Information not currently available)
	2	In Custody	23 June 1992	(Information not currently available)
	3	As Unequal As Others	30 June 1992	(Information not currently available)
	4	Little Extras	7 July 1992	(Information not currently available)
	5	Endangered Species	14 July 1992	(Information not currently available)
	6	No Special Treatment	21 July 1992	(Information not currently available)
	7	The Pretenders	28 July 1992	(Information not currently available)
	8	End Of Term	4 August 1992	(Information not currently available)

See also

• epguides.com
• radiolistings.co.uk