The genesis of the series originated from a lunch between executive producers Sam Mendes and Armando Iannucci. The two were initially sharing ideas for a potential collaboration but nothing came to pass. It wasn't until Mendes shared his experiences making the James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015) to Iannucci, which he described as "magnificent chaos", that lead to the idea of the series, with Jon Brown being hired as showrunner.