This week, there’s trouble brewing between Ireland and Saudi Arabia over the arrest of four young Irish nurses. While Harriet is counselled to stay out of it, she finds her judgement compromised when the wife of a top Saudi official visits the Embassy and asks for refuge. Faced between her principles and the good of British interests, Harriet tackles a tricky situation with grace.
Content warning: this episode deals with domestic violence and false allegations of the same. This review doesn’t dwell on those aspects of the episode, but doesn’t gloss over them either.
About
The second episode of series one of The Ambassador, ‘Refuge’, aired on the 11th January 1998 on BBC One. It was filmed on location in Ireland, and was a production of Ecosse Films & Irish Screen. Written by Tim Prager and directed by Patrick Lau, it stars Pauline Collins as ‘Harriet Smith’, Denis Lawson as ‘John Stone’, Owen Roe as ‘Kevin Flaherty’, William Chubb as ‘Stephen Tyler’ and Alison McKenna as ‘Jennifer’. Additional guest stars this episode include Tom Connolly as ‘Sam Smith’, Dominic Mafham as ‘Julian Wadham’, Hassani Shapi as ‘Badr Hashem’ and Jessica Turner as ‘Christine Hashem’.
Availability: Out on Region 2 DVD—currently in print from Simply Media as of 2016. Available digitally from Amazon in the United States—both series are included in Prime and are additionally available for purchase separately.
Refuge
The episode opens with a diplomatic incident which, for once, doesn’t involve the British Embassy. Four Irish nurses have been arrested in Saudi Arabia for the possession of alcohol, and they are subject to sentences of five years imprisonment. Flaherty is in charge of negotiating an agreement with the Saudi Government, and he appears to reach one: the nurses will be convicted, but their sentences commuted and they will be deported back to Ireland. There’s one catch though. Flaherty is not allowed to announce the results to the press, meaning he has to face an increasingly hostile home environment as it seems that the Saudis only wish to discuss the merits of the Irish racing industry.
Harriet, meanwhile, is busy, because her son Sam has touched down on Irish soil. Sam attends boarding school in England and it’s likely that this is the first time he’s seen his mother in a while. His reunion with her is weirdly formal, though he brushes this off. When Sam arrives home at the Ambassador’s residence, it’s clear that he’s largely being parented by Becky, Harriet’s housekeeper. Becky’s the one who’s actually checking in on him, finding out how his exams are going, etc. Additionally, Sam doesn’t take well to the heavy security presence required in Ireland, which includes several armed guards.
One of the Saudi Ministers involved—Badr Hashem—suddenly makes an impulse decision to return to Saudi Arabia, taking his British wife and son with him. His wife, Christine Hashem figures out what he’s up to and makes a break for it with their son Peter from the diplomatic car. They are pursued, but she manages to give them the slip. When attempting to book a flight out of the country, she discovers that her credit cards have been cancelled and her accounts blocked. Seeking solace, she takes a taxi to a B&B for reasons that will only become clear much later in the episode.
In the embassy, Stephen warns Harriet not to get involved with the Irish-Saudi debacle, as the UK wishes to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Christine arrives at the embassy, and demands protection. Harriet runs into Christine, and there’s a great moment where Christine doesn’t realise she’s actually speaking to the British Ambassador. Harriet informs Christine that she needs to be satisfied that Christine’s life is in danger before providing refuge. Initially, Christine just states that her husband wants a divorce and to take her son away. When this is not enough, Christine reveals that she’s been beaten, with bruises across her chest. Harriet immediately offers her refuge.
Furious with this decision, Badr goes straight to Flaherty. He attempts to use the fate of the nurses as a bargaining chip to secure the release of his wife and son. Additionally, Harriet is facing a fight on the home front: both Stephen and Julian counsel her that provoking a row is not in the interests of the Foreign Office. Harriet, clearly passionate about women’s rights, is adamant that Christine deserves protection.
Harriet recruits Sam to distract Christine’s son Peter while she attempts to deal with the situation. A doctor has been called to examine Christine and has determined that her injuries were not self-inflicted. All the interested parties attend a meeting at the British Embassy. Badr Hashem denies the allegations, while Flaherty attempts to negotiate on his behalf. Badr only really wants his son returned, but Harriet won’t hand him over, because of the domestic violence allegations and Christine’s fears.
Over the course of the meeting, John appears to have noticed something amiss. He goes to lurk in the surveillance room—which is delightfully low-tech by modern standards—digging up records, before taking the information to Harriet. He suspects she was having an affair, and he has a tape. If Badr knew about the affair, it’s possible that he beat his wife over it.
Meanwhile, Sam and Peter have both slipped out the Embassy. Badr tracks them down, and almost manages to reclaim his son, but the Embassy staff are just slightly quicker and John manages to rescue them both.
Later that evening, John has managed to find a skilled army forensics doctor, who has analysed Christine’s wounds further. He says that there isn’t a lot that can be proved from the evidence, but he has a theory that the assaulter was left-handed. Badr is right-handed, so maybe he was telling the truth: he didn’t assault her.
The next day, Harriet confronts Christine about her affair. She denies it, but Harriet still moves to remove Embassy protections from her. John, meanwhile, is busy going through the Embassy’s phone records to uncover the identity of the man she was having the affair with. He makes a discovery that leads him to the B&B Christine visited earlier. His undercover routine is perfect—a bumbling English man with no idea about the Irish—he convinces the landlady that he’s Christine’s lawyer, and gets the identity of the man who Christine was with. As it turns out, he’s on Flaherty’s staff.
When John confronts him, he admits that he did cause Christine’s injuries, but on her own request. She knew that without evidence, her allegations of abuse would go nowhere. When Harriet and John speak to Christine about it, she admits it all. She was afraid of being taken back to Saudi Arabia, where the punishment for adultery is stoning. Harriet, ever the diplomat, says that she is going to send Christine and Peter to England, and let the English courts decide what should happen.
Badr waits for news, and as soon as Harriet arrives to inform him of the decision, he demands his son. Harriet admits that they have done him wrong, believing the accusations of abuse, but stands strong to her decision to let matters be resolved by an English court. Badr does not like this: he does not believe he, as a Saudi, will be treated fairly by the English court. In all fairness, he might be right. But Christine wouldn’t be treated fairly in Saudi Arabia, either, so Harriet is merely doing what she thinks best. She has Peter’s best interests at heart, and that’s the truth.
The episode ends at the racetrack, with the Irish nurses successfully freed, and all seemingly well.
Verdict
Once again, The Ambassador shows it’s not afraid to tackle controversial topics. It packs a whole lot of them into this episode—perhaps too many, as I don’t think this episode ever manages to fully deal with the ramifications of everything this episode brings up. It does, however, hammer home that political decisions are always complicated, with wide-ranging consequences. What should have been a private dispute almost turned into a major diplomatic incident involving three separate countries. It keeps up the graphic imagery, picturing the Irish nurses in chains, as well as showing Christine Hashem’s injuries.
The writing on this episode is amongst the weakest in the series; it feels a little heavy-handed at times, whilst also leaving a lot of trailing leads. A lot of things come out of nowhere, and you aren’t really sure how they tie up until the end—by which point, you might have forgotten it was even an ongoing concern. The subject matter is tricky, but this really isn’t one of The Ambassador’s strongest episodes.
There’s a tease in this episode that something might be going on between John and Harriet’s assistant Jennifer. He arrives to the Embassy when he’s not supposed to, and shares a furtive glance with Jennifer as he tries to explain. It doesn’t get elaborated on, but it’s something to bear in mind going forward.
Wardrobe highlights this episode definitely include the blue-shirt in the blue-light surveillance room look, which happens again over the series and never fails to be good. The glasses adopted for the disguise are also very cute. All of his suits do suffer from nineties tailoring though, and they’re perpetually a little too big with shoulder pads, and honestly? He needs a leaner cut. It just makes him look short. He’s not tall, wardrobe.
The highlight of this episode is—as always—the scenes between John and Harriet. There are two in particular I’d like to highlight. The first is a conversation they have about just how John gets the information about Christine’s affair. “Are all the phones in this building tapped?” Harriet asks. John says no, but Harriet is unconvinced. He earnestly follows it up: “No, of course not!”. It’s a scene that reminds us that Harriet is the only person who comes even close to knowing John, and that she’s the only person who can pull anything resembling the truth from his mouth. The second is when they’re at the residency, talking to the military forensics’ officer, looking very cuddly and snug on the sofa. They’re just very comfortable with each other, and that’s just so nice to see.
Also, I’ve just got to take a moment to talk about Julian. Julian has no diplomatic talent. How he got hired at the Embassy, I will never know. This episode doesn’t even come close to his biggest screw-up, but dear lord, he’s not off to a good start.
Next time
A crisis emerges when Harriet’s son Nate appears to be mixed up in the same business as a young woman arrested for drug smuggling. Harriet and John investigate, but will they take it too far? Find out next time in The Ambassador: Nine Tenths of the Law.