A thread for Armando Iannucci's VEEP

yeah, i laughed. i'll watch until they cancel it.

no i mean i honestly believe, given time, those 'jokes' will become funny

this is fine, it's not remotely as good as the early thick of it but it's doubtful anything else is going to be, certainly within the pro forma confines of the american sitcom

felt very "ooh, handheld cameras, gratuitous cursing, big fuckin deal" to me, but still pretty funny and a good cast, will watch again

lol well in 2k12 those things are pretty commonplace no?

feel like american sitcom is a more expansive genre than british sitcom -- one of the weird things about the thick of it is that it is an absolutely classical version of standard british sitcom setup, only it somehow escapes being awful

xpost ha yeah i don't really notice those things at this point?

well yeah that's what i meant, the look/feel of it is kind of played imo

that's an unplayable aesthetic

I think it needs time to develop side characters. People like Blinky Ben, etc...

There's also a different dynamic from The Thick of It. Everyone listened to/was scared of Malcolm, and the politicians tended to need to be shepherded around. JLD seems to have all the agency in Veep, where everyone else is just scrambling to fix her mistakes or get her what she wants.

Also the US doesn't have an equivalent of the civil servant, so we don't get a Terri.

you guys realize this isn't an adaptation, right, it's a different show by the same creator

original title was "The Veep of It" iirc

the thick of eep

In the Veep

ah, british humour.

some dude is british?

lol no, i don't think so

oi mates some dude is

these political shows that Iannucci has done, do they have any of the same absurdity of the 'Armando Iannucci Show'? I saw the first episode of 'Veep' and it didn't, though it was funny enough in its own right.

no. at least not the surrealism.

though his next show for HBO, Armando Iannucci's Veep Trumpet, probably will

the early thick of it is blackly absurd in the best sense, some of his more freeform stuff is a bit winsome

blimey blood sausage, i've been outed

too right guv'nor

Some of the lines felt quite British or straight out of TTOI like 'massive and total shit' and 'Tom Hanks might die'. This is not nec a bad thing but slightly jarring?

American innovation on stale British sitcom formula = something nice occasionally happens to the lead character, instead of being dangled in front of them and snatched away.

Obviously I'm against it.

http://www.webtvwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/my-hero-logo.jpg

^ six series

what i mean about classical british sitcom in re: the thick of it would be something like:

- enclosed environment
- all conflict is created by strict pecking order amongst characters
- each episode follows a rising action plot ending with someone making a tit of themselves

you guys realize this isn't an adaptation, right, it's a different show by the same creator

― Poor Turrican (some dude), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:14 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc ianucci was 'developing' an american version of 'the thick of it' for ages and then it wasn't being mentioned and then his name was attached to this? i mean ... c'mon. it's the same show. sort of.

no, as far as I know there actually was a pilot for the American version of The Thick Of It directed by Christopher Guest

In October, 2006, ABC announced that it was developing a U.S. version of “The Thick of It.” Mitchell Hurwitz, whose show “Arrested Development” had just been cancelled, was named executive producer and co-writer. In a recent e-mail, Hurwitz said that he saw similarities between “Arrested Development” and “The Thick of It,” which, in his reading, was about “people whose big outward and ‘important’ lives are run on a very small and impaired set of inner resources.” He went on, “That just really appeals to me comedically. . . . Big people with small hearts. Stupid people with high I.Q.s.”
Christopher Guest directed the pilot. Iannucci barely had a role. Peter Bennett-Jones, Iannucci’s agent in the U.K., told me, “It seemed to be in good hands, but they just didn’t listen to Armando.” The pilot, which never aired, starred Oliver Platt as an almost avuncular (and non-swearing) envoy from the office of his party’s Whip, and John Michael Higgins as a peppy congressman who has never heard of “The Daily Show.” Seen today, the pilot seems flat. And there is no hint of melancholy, as there was in the British version, no sense of ideals eroded over time. Iannucci said, “It’s not awful, it’s just dull—which, you know, is a good trick to pull off.” Hurwitz defended the pilot, but admitted that it had “lost the sense of mania of the original.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/26/120326fa_fact_parker?currentPage=all

oh, sure, if you want to rely on external evidence

look i just called old mandy on the old dog and bone and he said for bobby moore that he developed this show as a version of his other show but for the bloody septics and now he's confirmed it let's have no more talk about it, right? right

Solid premiere ratings. If people liked it as much as I do it should get a couple of seasons.

it'll do fine. you practically have to kill a few horses to get less than 2-3 full seasons on HBO these days.

i'm excited for 2-3 full seasons of this

How many eps is a typical HBO season?

SATC generally did 18 - sometimes as few as 12 or 8 (first season + when two of the actresses were pregnant respectively)

deadwood and curb were/are 10-13

dramas i think tend to be ~12

eastbound + d was 6-8

it seems to be inconsistent, even within a particular show's run

Stoked for this, it'll feel good to watch a US sitcom from the beginning at the same time as America.

I doubt there have been 18 episodes of The Thick of It in total!!

16 iirc?

enlightened had 10 and it's getting a 2nd season

i enjoyed this tho i kind of hope future episodes are less...stuffed

there are 8 episodes of this season of Veep

btw i might've mentioned this in a previous thread but a lot of the show was shot in Baltimore instead of D.C. and i was this close to getting to spend a day on the set a few months ago, am really bummed that didn't pan out. maybe next season.

The first episode is good if a little slow-burny (certainly compared to TTOI, but I should make a conscious effort to not compare the two too much). Excellently acted all round.

kind of reminded me of early parks & rec in that I didn't know what the stakes were, so there was just a bunch of quality comic actors all playing clueless. It's just the pilot, though.

reminds me more of Lisa Kudrow's HBO show The Comeback than anything else

dumb Brit speaking but i've never actually understood exactly what HBO means. is it pay per view? is it cable only? over here we have some satelite/ cable stations where you *have* to pay for the channel month by month (Sky Sports, etc) but some are free with a basic 'freeview' box and so you pay once for that, then never again to watch any given channel. is that how it works over there with HBO? i was never sure also why that means you get more swearing and nudity and suchlike in HBO shows than other non HBO shows. hey i could WIKI this shit but i want the fun version from you guys.

splett is a candide character

yes otm

then when the pregnancy actually happens he says something like "well, I guess I don't have to do that ever again"

goddammit I am NOT going to go back and watch the season and a half of American episodes that I dipped out on, and there is no Splettnet supercut for that year

someone should make a splett reel for the good of humanity

I watched season 1 when it came out but wasn't really into it, though now I've been catching up -- just started season 5, and whoo boy DOCTOR Splett is a thing!

The studious lack of partisanship is weird, though, for what I'd assume would be satire; instead the underlying message is more in line with "everyone is bad and/or self-serving."

which, in a way, is a much more honest take than a certain Sorkin show

Ok a Jonah/ Splett ticket would be one that I’d commit voter fraud for, I’m not even kidding.

Jonah immediately going off script to be belligerent and the entire wife/sister thing is so good

I'm still waiting for that one intern who was fired for the data breach to exact her pound of flesh.

Finished the sixth season. It's weird that as awful as Selina is, I still find myself rooting for her.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

thinking about the final moments of this series in re: tom hanks

Lots of talk about Armando's second HBO sitcom, Avenue 5, over in the Silicon Valley thread.

Ave 5 definitely got funnier and more apparent in its satire as it went along - the first couple were dire - but never really took off, and absolutely never found a tone that supported what it's doing. The building of multiple incompetencies and frustration of the less-incompetent characters has a Thick Of It feel, but the vibe never escalates within the scenes. It's like they're letting the jokes breathe for audience laughter, but without a laugh track in the show, it just means they never get momentum.

idk i really liked it? it doesn't hold up to his previous shows (i'm watching thick of it again right now in fact) but i like that the setitng allows him to create some of the most absolutely fantastically horrifying moments he ever has, in a way that veep and thick of it can't. the extended airlock sequence had me rolling. josh gad is SO GOOD in this, which shocked me as i've never really given him a second look in anything else. laurie's rapidfire code switching is remarkable. and of course zach woods' weirdo nihilism. i could definitely do with fewer important passenger characters (the two husbands don't really accomplish much as characters, nor does jessica st clair's character, as much as she is a delight), but if this show kept descending further and further into absolute existential dread i'd be satisfied.

it's like standard ianucci + sex house + space

i really liked it. the airlock scene had me howling

also, is the pope's face in the shit actually trump? i think it is

https://www.reddit.com/r/Avenue5/comments/ff0u42/the_turd_face_is_trump_right/

It was obviously JP2 for me, but without watching it again I'm not sure I could find the reference pic.