Last in this broad and disappointing series, clearly based on Julian Assange yet yielding a fraction of the comedic potential offered by the man himself. Ben Miller is the self-important document leaker disappointed by the superficial response of the press to his manifesto. He then inadvertently ruins the chances of his El Rican hosts of bidding for the World Cup. His bunkmate, Ludo, whose indeterminate European language sounds mostly Welsh, must use his hacking skills to bail him out.

Radio Times review

As this fitfully funny comedy comes to the end of its short run, the embassy-interred Dan and Ludo seem to be on the edge of a big change. GCHQ leaker Dan has at last finished his manifesto, which he's sure everyone will be interested in (the Latin joke is staying in, too), while hacker Ludo finally finds some purpose in his life - but as usual it all falls apart, thanks to a World Cup bid, a fake torture claim and a spate of fictional Canadian bear attacks.

This finale doesn't quite match the laughs of the last episode, but it ends nicely, leaving the door open for another series; hopefully BBC Four will see the potential in this dark little comedy and bring it back for another run. If only to meet Ludo's legendary Aunt Inga...

From BBC Four comes a brand new satirical comedy: Asylum. It was created by Kayvan Novak - the man behind E4's FoneJacker - and stars Ben Miller as Daniel Hern, a whistleblower hated by America and offered solace by a fictional 'El Rican' embassy.

The show appears to be promising, perhaps similar in its politically satirical nature to The Thick of It. However, where Asylum falls short is in its comedic value. Hern's sidekick Ludo, his ridiculously inept lawyer and a One Direction obsessed journalist, should have elicited a laugh or a smile from me in theory, but something in the comedy's delivery just missed the mark. Whilst not awful, I would not watch it again in a hurry. Although, being only 30 minutes long, maybe Asylum will get better as the series progresses and, for lovers of satires, it could be well be worth a watch.

Radio Times review

This BBC Four comedy just gets better. After the introductory episode, things are heating up for our embassy-bound duo Ludo Backslash (Dustin Demri-Burns) and Dan Hern (Ben Miller), with MI6 and the CIA pulling out all the stops to tempt them out of the embassy.

Their plans include playing an ice-cream truck jingle outside the window ("It worked for Uday Hussein!"), catfishing and revealing that there's a mole in the embassy - surely it couldn't be the 50-year-old unpaid intern with a suspicious American accent (an excellent guest role from Arrested Development's David Cross)?

As Dan and Ludo's position becomes less certain, the show seems to become more confident, with gags and topical references coming thick and fast.

Asylum, despite Ben Miller, isn't (yet) funny. The premise is fine, the Julian Assange story played for laughs (not that the real-life tale involves any less bathos, hubris and other words the Greeks did best). Miller plays it for high-minded pompous, as a GCHQ whistleblower holed up for 14 months in the London embassy of "El Rico", a banana republic which purely wants to stick a finger up to America but finds Dan Hern (Miller) an increasingly ungrateful and unwelcome guest, simply bored and boring and having lost his media cachet. So El Rico - look at the funny banana republic, welcoming to an embassy ball the funny North Koreans! - also brings to shelter one Ludo Backslash, a mittel-European wanted by urgent Hollywood dollars for having streamed for fun every major film for years.

Much of the conception is by Kayvan Novak, who also appears as the "herpes in a suit" ambassador's plotting son, and Dustin Demri-Burns is the amiable Backslash, and these two alone, never mind Miller, should have guaranteed laughs. But it was written by none of them, and that shows: it has too few quirks, a too-obvious incompetent lawyer, one plot device (a misheard word) so old it's got rust on its moss, and too many stereotypes which were old in the 70s. Come out of the 70s! With your hands UP.

Asylum review

My hopes were high for this fictionalised version of the Assange story, starring Ben Miller. But I was too busy asking questions to laugh. It could be a good sitcom if you could believe any of it.

TV review: Asylum

There are some good lines in the show, though nothing spectacular. The comedy lies in the contrast between Dan's weariness and disillusion and excitable Ludo who thinks the whole thing is a great adventure, and that they're both snug little room-mates hiding out from the baddies.

TV review: Asylum

The plot of episode one centred on a misunderstanding straight out of Sitcom Writing 101, which any moderately alert viewer will see coming as soon as the seed is planted. In fact, the show is pretty much by-the-numbers stuff, despite its brilliantly timely premise.

Asylum, BBC4 - TV review

This is a satirical comedy for our times - more BuzzFeed than Private Eye - but with more substance than comic memes of marsupials to keep us going back for more.

Asylum, episode 1, review: 'boring'

This new comedy inspired by Julian Assange's exile in Ecuador just wasn't funny enough.