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Do not watch this film on a full bladder. You will wet yourself laughing. Believe me. I know. Witherspoon and Vergara are, appallingly, funny together. It doesn't much matter what's happening with the plot. Everything they do is funny. It is a grand farce driven by deliriously 'over the top' characterisations from both of these divine comediennes. The absurd becomes the sublime with this fortunate pairing.

In their early days at the Hal Roach studio in the mid 1920s', Laurel and Hardy would gather up director Leo McCarey, the great Scottish actor, Jimmy Finlayson as their usual foil, a skeleton crew and would head out onto the streets of Culver City to make a movie. With no script and armed with only a concept like Big Businesses' trying to sell a Christmas trees door to door in July. They just went out and improvised and had fun; lots and lots of fun. This movie has the same mad,inventive spontaneity as the classics. It must have caught our worthy but over cautious critics off guard. So desperately do they want to be taken seriously that they are prone to dismiss fun for it's own priceless sake lest they be on the outside of movie critic hipster land looking in with no one that 'matters' looking back. Kudos to Stephanie Zacharek for getting it right.

The US have lost over 6,700 killed and over 50'000 injured in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. Among the coalition forces another 300+ were killed including 179 Brits. Not to mention the million or so Iraqi and Afghan deaths Both conflicts are total failures militarily and politically. These brave people died for what exactly? The only true winners in these wars have been the defence contractors. Halliburton's stock went up over 500% and they aren't the only ones to make a 'killing' on these wasteful, terrible wars. Would a US corporation kill American service men to protect their profits. You bet they would. They have done it everyday for 13 years. This programme tells an all to plausible and engrossing story that sorely needed telling. The production values, acting, directing are all excellent. It is television at it's best. I highly recommend it

Ironically enough it was Ronald Reagan that began the long, sure decline of standards of living in the US by his betrayal of social democracy and his embrasure of laissez faire capitalism. Declines in Us wages and living standards and growing inequality begin with his Presidency. At the time this programme is set the Soviet Union was experiencing an internal economic meltdown, unrest in their client states, especially, those with past grievances and exacerbated by their costly and failing mission in Afghanistan. All of which was, inexcusably, missed by the CIA who insisted that the Soviet Union had never posed a greater threat when in fact it was on the verge of collapse. Which indeed it did. Our heroes in this programme are fighting a futile rear guard action for a doomed cause. They haven't a clue how weak and close to implosion is the beloved socialist paradise where they grew up sharing tiny apartments with multiple families. That they live prosperous, comfortable lives, free from government oppression never seems to twig in their never ending devotion to the Motherland. Elizabeth and Phillip are, extremely, well trained. They are highly skilled, ruthless when necessary and dedicated to their mission. Can they be anything but doomed? I can't wait for series 4 to find out.