A thread for 'The Thick Of It' (and 'In The Loop' as well)

incidentally, what happened with chris langham and those, ahem, allegations? :(

Interesting how both shows portray unelected reps having much more power and influence than actual politicians - lack of accountability etc. civ servants (and strong polis like thatcher) loved YM for that v reason and i bet campbell and his like similarly love The Thick Of It - it makes them look soooo hard and ministers so weak.

IA was on R4 last week saying he's making another ten eps and expanding it to look at the oppo. could be interesting given the Cameronisation of the tories. Estelle Morris was on the same show complaining about the way TTOI was so testerone-based (again, v YM) and apptly there will be more women in the second series. (perhaps the young policy wonks oppo gf?).

that's great news. in the US you have 'the west wing' with lots of very highly paid writers in teams; here i guess they'll rely on the artisan production timescale of armand and co. i'd love it if they expanded it to 'west wing' proportions. i don't think it's particualrly far from reality, according to my civil service friends anyway.

Estelle Morris was on the same show complaining about the way TTOI was so testerone-based

given that she was kind of bullied out by the male cabal around lord adonis and campbell, you have to ask: 'eh?'

which one: peter capaldi (the campbell character) or the even more mental "jamie"?

I think Morris's objection was more that the show chose to focus on such a masculine department rather than to deny it was a genuine representation. She wanted AI to write about a female-led dept, which might have made for the gentle jolliness of Dada's dreams.

You mean - which scottish mentalist do I think is more terrifying? I wouldn't want to put the wrong number of sugars in either of their teas.

I was on about the campbell one, yeh. There's this one scene (I don't think it's been on BBC2 yet) where langham asks him is he ever gets lonely. "Fuck no" he replies. Most writers/actors/directors might have been tempted to put in some vulnerability at this point, maybe does get lonely from time to time. But no chance, it's delivered in such a hardcore "Fuck no, don't be a twat" way that you get the impression that this guy is a political machine. Written and performed brilliantly, without a doubt.

I've yet to make it through an entire episode. Telly shouldn't be such hard work.

also, isn't new labour a v. soft target by now - i mean don't we all know that the party is run by brutal control freaks who manipulate the 'truth' for their own ends, etc? I think a critique of slightly smug middle class satirists wld be more 'daring' at this point

there are gags, and the reason there's shouting and swearing is -- it's set in a high-pressure govt department. it's like asking why people in 'black books' sell books.

also, isn't new labour a v. soft target by now - i mean don't we all know that the party is run by brutal control freaks who manipulate the 'truth' for their own ends, etc? I think a critique of slightly smug middle class satirists wld be more 'daring' at this point

mm, maybe, but which television programmes have actually attacked this soft target? i think the problem with the smug and unfunny 'yes minister' was that it was somewhat removed from the reality of thatcher-era political practice.

I do agree w/ you abt Yes Minister, tho - obv. there's a lot of structural/performance craft there, but it's awfully self-satisfied and yes, it looked totally toothless as soon as Thatcher claimed to love it.

Curb Your Enthusiasm?

*honestly racks brains*

like what?

xposts

the drama docu abt the Islington restaurant where Brown and Blair sealed their 'pact' - not about NuLab in power

drama docu abt the death of David Kelly - COMEDY, but yeah ok, kinda (almost simultaneous w. TTOI though? -- TTOI was about may 2005, when was this?)

My Dad the Prime Minister - haven't seen.

that crappy thing abt PR etc. w/Stephen Fry and John Bird - not about nulab, surely?

Rory Bremmner - shit

Dead Ringers - not really dcedicated to nulab but yeah incorporated elements.

at least one crappy Andy Hamilton thing on BBC1 - ?

Possibly the worst thing I've ever seen on TV, I'd rather sit down with a plate of liver and devilled kidneys to watch Gunther von Hagens strut his stuff

to my mind, if something's smug, it's probably shit, and BB&F is both, but that's just me.

Bremner = "Mike Yarwood w/ O levels"

Interesting that it's Sixsmith (of the 'bury bad news' Jo Moore/Stephen Byers scandal, cos as Wikipedia makes clear, he felt that his career as a civil servant had been sacrificed as revenge for the end of Moore's as a special advisor... hence TTOI is particularly hard on special advisors.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sixsmith

i dunno i just think it's far more than 'yes minister' done in an 'office' stylee.

I do like -

- Who's the only gay in the village?

- Dunno, Eddie Grundy?

don't think we'll be seeing this in the same form too soon.

BBC4 political satire The Thick of It returned for a one-off special last night, attracting just over 200,000 viewers.
The Thick of It has been showered with critical praise and awards, but, while attracting respectable ratings, has not yet broken into the top rank of multichannel shows in terms of audience figures.

Due to Chris Langham's personal problems, last night's one-off outing for The Thick of It focused on Peter Capaldi's potty-mouthed government spin doctor, Malcolm Tucker, and an opposition shadow minister played by Roger Allam.

The Thick of It was watched by 237,000 viewers between 10.30pm and 11.30pm, according to unofficial overnights.

[...]

The darts final attracted 1.25 million viewers between 10pm and 11pm. Overall, the darts averaged 955,000 viewers between 7.30pm and 11pm."

just saw trailer for a new one

i guess the govt is trying to make sure everyone gets covered in shit, rather than just them.

dead ppl exempt from pisstaking iirc

Prob because 'leaking' is an endemic culture and 'lol email incident' is standard breach of a standard code, i spose

dead ppl exempt from pisstaking iirc

steve jobs caught in crossfire

the Lib Dem guys are so terrible. Worst episode of the series no doubt

no: the first was the worst. this was fine. the labour stuff is always pretty reliably good. it's weird how the writing for malcolm - like the line about men modelling pants - can be so sharp & easy, while they flap around and revert to kinda stock-humour w/the others. the LDs kinda grow on me because the portrait of them as rudderless, self-satisfied dicks devoid of principle trying to win a race feels incisive.

"No email, no Diving Bell and Butterfly-ing"

The Lib Dems can be funny - "two years' doing press at nPower, it never leaves you" - but they're clearly written out of resentment and their idiocy is massively camped up.

I am watching the last episode now and had to pause it because Terri in front of the enquiry is absolute majestic.

what a way to end a series!

haven't watched it yet but there's one after this, right?

yeh it said 6 of 7 on my info thing

Yeah there's no way that's the end. But if the last episode doesn't turn out to be everything happening behind the scenes over the course of that one I'll be massively disappointed.

We haven't even had Ollie, Phil and Emma in the same room yet ffs.

So, business back to normal, or a disingenuous summary:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgrd
SERIES 4 Episode 7
Dan Miller gets sent on a fact-finding mission to the local cop-shop to press the flesh.

That was an awesome hour of TV. Read that the actors weren't given time to rehearse, nor to chat between takes, which looks about right.

Wow, for an hour long show set in a government inquiry that sure flew by.

It was clever TV, but I didn't laugh once, which isn't great for a comedy. Also, I found the idea of an inquiry into "leaking" in its totality to pretty idiotic.

Oh God, we laughed a lot. Particularly at Robin and Terri. Malcolm was just horrible to watch at times but his character is so amazingly written.
Agree that 'inquiry into leaking' was weird, also all the questions of 'was it/he bullying y/n'
"I think it was Ghandi that said..."

'I'm just a lad from Leeds with a lust for life' = haahahahahah

yeah that was pitch-perfect

The inquiry into leaking doesn't make much sense in itself but leaking Tickell's medical records in itself would be a serious enough offence to merit an inquiry, I think?

I laughed loads throughout this, especially at Stuart and Terri. I thought that Malcolm was amazing at playing the inquiry until it started to unravel.

Basically everyone's guilty in this with the except of Stuart and Mannion, who are merely incompetent? And Robin I suppose.

Mannion lied to the committee when he said he didn't tell the reporter about the medical records being illegally obtained iirc

Robyn was MVP in this episode

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mckz19W4691rtc969o1_500.png

images that you don't need to look at the url to know it contains "media.tumblr.com"

http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Thick%20of%20It%20(UK)/works

Kill me now.

So is there any definitive word on whether that was the last series or not?

Iannucci seems to be getting quoted as saying "'It's definitely the last series. I've known from past experience to never say never." -- which doesn't actually make any sense.

I'm happy with that being the end, they can't really row back from it in any credible way.

Glen bawling out the Dosac office and Malcolm laying bare the emptied husk of his soul were astonishing scenes, and Stuart's "solid bed of cunts" speech was nice cherry on top. I hated the LibDems at the start of this but now I kind of appreciate how Iannucci made them about as loathsome as possible. Surprised Dosac was still standing at the end though.

Kind of telling how Ollie managed to slime his way to the top apparently without having done anything competent whatsoever. It was only the Nicola strand that felt kind of redundant.

Thought that was the best episode by a fair degree. (Thought last week's was dire). Felt like it established relationships that shd have been established at the beginning. Like Lib Dem advisor's 'One of the many many things that baffle me about you' bit. Best use of Terri in this series as well. Agree Nicola Murray + aide was a bit redundant (but that it was also the point i guess). 'That's a big funeral home isn't it?' made me laugh. As did Glenn's 'Anyone read Wolf Hall?' at the beginning. Malcolm's and Glenn's meltdowns were great - Malcolm's impressively baleful and slightly frightening.

Completely agree about Ollie, too.

The best Nicola moment was when she was being interviewed about Malcolm's departure, talking about a new era of politics of dignity or integrity or whatever, apparently having forgotten she was being filmed standing in front of the giant chop. Subtly done.

i was expecting/hoping olly to make some kind of fuckup rather than leave himself where he wanted to be, but oh well

i could see some value in revisiting it but it depends what british politics does in the meantime eh. plenty of scope i think. malcolm retired, one or two scenes only, ollie exactly as predicted, peter ... well, peter actually has more than one thing you could do with him, i think.

i'm interested how the series would stand up to rewatching. last week's i found i couldn't actually remember a lot of the details so it was kind of obtuse. also i'm all for That Sort Of Thing in theory - sudden inexplicable eleventh-hour format change, or whatever - but it only halfway came off, if that. like i wasn't actually sure at what point malcolm perjured himself, which uh

i rewatched the first five minutes of the first series last night, it was mentioned in some guardian thing (i forgot that the first five minutes is just malcolm and a guy you don't see again), and what struck me is how much of a shoestring it looks like it was filmed on, peter capaldi's suit doesn't really fit, no one's makeup is right, they're in some office that doesn't look set-dressed so much as it looks like they're just filming in someone's office ... what also struck me is quite how well capaldi's inhabiting the role right out of the gate, even when it looks like something being filmed for a media studies a level

Peter is the best character other than Malcolm I think, although that is to a large part down to Roger Allam's consistently world-weary performance. But the show wouldn't work without Malcolm at its centre.

Malcolm lied about having acquired Tickell's medical records, I believe. I kind of want to watch the series again from scratch, the Tickell stuff just didn't seem very important in the first couple of episodes so I barely paid any attention to it.

when he showed up on both sides of things i figured it was going to be the unifying plot but also it seemed like there was a lot else to keep track of

and i don't know, malcolm moved from the periphery to the center and back twice already, so ..

Peter's face when hearing Stewart get sacked was sublime

http://i.imgur.com/5eIVH.gif

Beautiful

I liked how unashamed they were about making the Home Secretary look as much like Theresa May as possible.

Stewart's speech after he was sacked, about rehabilitating the party, was stunning.

I hope they don't do any more, though. Some great eps this series, but I didn't really enjoy last week's hour-long epic on any level, though I could see that it was an impressive piece of work.

xpost She wasn't the home sec was she? I thought she the Home Office's version of Malcolm …

But brilliant episode, and made last week's seem much more worthwhile in retrospect (though that episode was rather killed in its own right by having to do all the heavy lifting for this one). Only two quibbles were the last two bits in the closing credits sequence: would rather they had left us not knowing if Glenn had gone to the police; and we didn't need the life-goes-on bit back at Dosac.

I dunno, I liked those bits. As well as being life-goes-on it was one of the real consequences of hurriedly reacting to media outrage, and I think they've been pretty restrained in the series until now wrt that.

No, I'm pretty sure she's the Home Secretary. I'm sure on Stuart's awayday he boast about having two ministers at it.

I loved Glenn not going into the station so much

the malcolmisms in everyone's mouths rang a little false to me this time for some reason ("i'll squeeze his balls til they look like glacé cherries" - sorry that line is just not in mannion's repertoire) but yeah, ep saved by tremendous monologue from malcolm to ollie

i loved stewart sitting on the floor!! then finally rising as he came to the climax of his cunt-iloquy

There was one particular Malcolm quote in the last episode that made my jaw-drop at the time but I can't recall it for the life of me now. Will have to watch it again.

I found myself wondering whether Iannucci voted LibDem at the last election and was vocalising his rage through Glen.

i was expecting/hoping olly to make some kind of fuckup rather than leave himself where he wanted to be, but oh well

But surely that's the thing - that he ends up well on his way to empty huskdom?

yeah, this has been trailed all through the series

xpost With Olly, I think he had to end up in that job. Through all the series, Olly has always been just an empty shell of ambition. Malcolm, as he continually reminded us - and like Campbell IRL - was always stressing that he was doing the job because he loved the party and wanted the party to the right thing. So who better to replace a man who became an empty husk than someone who always was an empty husk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCR-yOoWJjI

Arse spraying mayhem