One-liner: a gaggle of inept public servants attempt to maintain a fully-functioning Orwellian dystopia. Or, Yes, Minister meets 1984. Or, Little Britain meets Brazil.

It's the near future, or an alternate present, or our present, or even the recent past - we're never quite sure. The government is doing everything in its power to spy on its citizens, as well as any visitors hapless enough to wander in through the borders, in the hope of retaining the status quo.

Scene: Etonian public servants attempt to run sham coffee shops at the G20, in order to dupe attendees into sharing their state secrets over the wifi. None of the public servants have the first clue about how to run a coffee shop.

Scene: journalists are detained at Heathrow. There's no good reason to keep them there, so cue awkward, protracted explorations of the contents of their luggage, as if Harold Pinter had written the Generation Game.

Scene: the government erects an Internet filter, recording all data traffic going in and out of the country, despite nobody in Whitehall quite knowing how to use a computer or how the Internet works.

In other words, the premise is that the government is inept, hopelessly bureaucratic, and catastrophically bad at running the dystopia it so badly wants to call its own. And how could that not be hilarious?