| Genre: | Comedy |
| Creator: | Kayvan Novak and Tom Thostrup |
| Director: | Iain B. MacDonald |
| Language: | English |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Num Series: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 3 |
| Runtime: | 30 minutes |
| Channel: | BBC Four (United Kingdom) |
Asylum is a British comedy series which was shown on BBC Four from 9 to 23 February 2015. The satirical comedy series revolves around a whistleblower and an internet pirate who 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]
Reviews of the show called it "boring" and said it "just wasn't funny enough."
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." Emmy Butlin lodged a complaint 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.
Written by Thom Phipps and Peter Bowden