This crowd-funded comedy lampoons a target ripe for satire, but it would be a shame if the programme ends up kissing the hand it set out to bite.
It seems like anyone who's spent time in the world of overseas aid has stories of lavish conferences at five star hotels, where aid workers, often the privileged alumni of elite universities, discuss the problems of the world's poorest.
Of course, most aid workers go on to claim that their own organisation was an exception to this rule. But still, something about the new Kenyan mockumentary The Samaritans, which details life inside Aid for Aid, "an NGO that does nothing" feels very timely.
Scott is a brash young American, with an MBA under his belt and a mother who runs an NGO. He's parachuted in as country director for Aid for Aid, much to the disgust of Martha, the ambitious Kenyan deputy director, who had her eyes on the job.
As they tussle for power, it becomes clear that the organisation itself is a tangle of bureaucracy and waste, where the staff seems more interested in eating sushi and chatting each other up than working. Whatever Aid for Aid is supposed to do is largely irrelevant. In one particularly funny scene, the staff choose to pursue a new project because it will make a snappy acronym.
The Samaritans is the product of a digital age. Money for the first two episodes was raised on kick-starter, and by charging to watch them, director Hussein Kurji hopes to raise enough money to complete the 13-episode first season.
It has to be said that the programme looks amazingly polished for something produced on the tightest of shoestrings. However, I wonder if the makers are being a little overambitious. The series boasts a huge cast, with over a dozen named characters so far, which makes these first two episodes slow going.
One character is secretly married to another one. Three employees are in a love triangle. Two others seem to hate each other though we so far haven't been told why. It is a lot to fit into a half hour sitcom, and there is a reason these sorts of shows traditionally restrict themselves to a handful of cast members and a single central conceit.
If the script could use some work, so could the casting. Scott and Martha are a great pair of characters, and between them share some extremely funny lines.
Scott in particular offers a mixture of bleeding heart platitudes and business school jargon that sounds worryingly plausible. "Give a man a fish, and he'll feed his family for a week. Give a man a fishing rod, and he'll probably sell it, buy an AK47, and join the militia."
However, I'm not sure that these performances are always strong enough for such central roles. Liam Acton, who plays Scott, seems too hesitant to play a consummate bullshitter, while Alison Kariuki never quite brings the necessary fire to the vodka-swilling, foul mouthed Martha.
There are some strong performances. Sadruddin Chandani invests the character of Malik, the cheerful, financially illiterate accountant, with a naïve energy.
Fridah Muhindi plays Elizabeth, who seems to be the nominated straight (wo)man of the programme, whose deadpan glances at the camera will be familiar to anyone who remembers Martin Freeman in The Office.
In fact, perhaps because of similarities such as this, The Samartians has been widely described as the Kenyan Office. I'm not sure the comparison is so apt.
The Office revolved around the banality of the life as an underpaid white collar drone, drawing humour from the familiar.
The world of the overfunded, out-of-touch NGOs portrayed in The Samaritans is an absurd and unfamiliar one. As a show, The Samaritans reminded me more of other British mockumentaries such as the London Olympic comedy 2012 or the political satire The Thick of It.
Just like those programmes, I'm sure that The Samaritans will be particularly popular with the targets it sets out to skewer, but therein lies the problem: over the course of a television series, villains tend to devolve into lovable losers.
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And already, after two episodes, Scott and Martha seem to be softening from their contemptible original selves into a pair of put-upon chumps trying to run a chaotic company.
Much of the excitement surrounding the launch of The Samaritans arose from long-nurtured desire to see overpaid and sanctimonious managers of wasteful and ineffective NGOs cut down to size. It would be a shame if this promising programme ended up kissing the hand it set out to bite.
You can rent and watch the first two episodes on the programme's website.
William Clarke is a freelance journalist specialising in African business and finance. He holds a post-graduate degree in English Literature from King's College London. Follow him on twitter @WilliamASClarke
