Hotel Babylon-Season 1 (2006)

"Light and breezy...the producers slowly develop the staff's backstories without heavily serializing the drama.  Brian Lowry, Variety

Editor's Note A host of attractions and perils await guests at HOTEL BABYLON. Inside this luxurious five-star hotel, everything is on the menu. Deputy Manager Charlie Edwards (Max Beesley) pulls back the curtain and takes viewers on a tour of what really goes on at the high-class hotel--including sex, theft, and murder--as the staff cater to the rich and famously demanding. While staying one step ahead of his tightly wound boss, Rebecca (Tamzin Outhwaite), Charlie and his crafty concierge, Tony (Dexter Fletcher), manage to wrangle guests whatever their hearts, or loins, desire. Based on Imogen Edwards-Jones' tell-all book, the BBC hit HOTEL BABYLON offers a bawdy and comic look at the lives of the privileged.

	Dexter Fletcher
	Emma Pierson
	Max Beesley
	Tamzin Outhwaite
	Barney Pilling, et. al. - Editor
	Christopher Aird - Producer
	Gareth Neame - Executive Producer
	Iain B. MacDonald, et. al. - Director
	Jim Williams - Original Music By
	Karl Probert - Art Director
	Michael Fleischer - Production Designer
	Paul Cross - Production Designer
	Paul Spriggs - Art Director
	Sean Van Hales - Cinematographer
	Tony Basgallop, et. al. - Writer

Variety 8 of 10
Light and breezy, "Hotel Babylon" is a fairly simple conceit, built around the employees at a high-class London hotel and the guests they serve -- "no matter how absurd, bizarre or perverse their requirements might be," as one staffer helpfully sum ups the job. More conventional than the best BBC dramas, the series gets by on an attractive cast and its high style, serving up a trifle that's not compulsive enough initially to demand an extended stay...Perhaps foremost, this series based on Imogene Edwards-Jones' novel highlights how even a middling drama carefully shaped by a writer tends to be more compelling than reality shows crafted by editors, inasmuch as the template is virtually the same as Bravo's unscripted version of this premise, "Welcome to the Parker"...Set to bluesy music that recalls the swingin' '60s and emphasizes the setting's gilded trappings, the show seldom delves much beneath that polished surface, but glides across it with considerable panache. That's in no small part due to Beesley's understated performance and narration, gently guiding the audience behind these velvet ropes, while the producers slowly develop the staff's backstories without heavily serializing the drama. - Brian Lowry