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

the real version is on sabbatical at stanford iirc

there isn't actually any need for most of the characters now that the writing is basically 'offscreen character x is a bloody old bastard' x1000

jed p much otm, here, though i wasn't quite as despairing. it did have an awkward 'radio play' feel to it, though, the direction fairly staid & the sorta framing & acting of fergus & the other guy p poor.

also it was annoying that they did that )re in the loop) thing of re-using an actor from a previous episode in a completely different role. one of the actors (i dunno who since i couldn't actually tell who anyone was supposed to be) was previously used as the newspaper editor in spinners and losers. the one who was trying to get ollie's ex gf to get ollie to dish the dirt so that he could have a headline for the morning's paper.

this is way off though! the guy was previously the night shift editor of the independent - afaic this seems like a fairly salient take on the small village quality of westminster, that he's pointedly resurfacing.

this def underperformed though. i feel like w/this being the final series there's actually some room for some real weight to it, in the same way that there was with in the loop, which was way more affecting & depressing than it was amusing, leaving you with questions about politics. having the opposition involved next week is kinda promising. but yeah mannion didn't quite flesh out, & there were a lot of kinda veep-level weak lines (i wish there was an app that could send him a dead cat, &c).

i loved it when terri stood up for herself. even if it was a calculated move to get herself fired.

more like episode two of the last series, actually, nicola snookering herself into pitching a policy on wooden toys

Glen having defected to the LibDems made sense as well.

yes this was great, both that it made sense for him to have done it, and the horrible clash between it having re-energised him and made him care and try to be involved, and his entire new world treating him like Ollie did

also just having Mannion as the lead was so delightful I glossed over the clunkiest lines.

BTW anyone in the US may want to note that this is available on hulu as are all previous series.
(also appears to be a hulu co-production this series)

"this is way off though! the guy was previously the night shift editor of the independent - afaic this seems like a fairly salient take on the small village quality of westminster, that he's pointedly resurfacing"

he's the same character?

well it seems so. same actor same character name. it doesn't make it any more believable to me though.

ps i wasn't despairing about it though, i just didn't think it was any good.

sure. btw the n-bomb & the rape joke really kinda stood out in this, both v graceless aside from being like ... a rape joke, &c. (that said, that there was an implied osbournian chancellor was neat).

Glen is going to get an astonishing savaging when he and Malcolm finally come into contact with one.another.

yeah it felt like a weak start, didn't really like the back & forth between the 2 new guys that glen was following around. it did pick up about halfway through, the app presentation to the classroom made me laugh cuz lol technology

Yeah the LibDems feel like the weak link. The Thick of It up until now has not even bothered to acknowledge that the LibDems even exist, now it feels like they're there just because they have to be. The Liberal spin doctor didn't seem to have any distinguishing character traits at all.

the guardian review was one of those articles they publish that seem like 200 concatenated tweets

but i did think the "too many characters" point was fair. can't really see a way round that in the coalition era tho.

The Liberal spin doctor didn't seem to have any distinguishing character traits at all.

That may be the point

yes let's make a sitcom about how boring the uk political class is and we will achieve this by making all the characters completely indistinguishable

That was fucking great,

do u think there's any chance they'll have an increasingly irrelevant Tucker become all faux-earnest and bleeding heart, all being chummy w/ lefty/gin/tea middle class twitter and being publicly worried about Stiliyan Petrov's cancer

no not really

next week's looks like fun

this is kind of more like the first series in some ways, than the last series

this is what happens when they don't let some wasteman write it

Definitely need to form a band called Quiet Batpeople.

Also Tinker Taylor Soldier Cunt.

i like malcolm's glasses. having the other member of shadcab be receptive enough to suss out his agenda is a neat move, too.

do u think there's any chance they'll have an increasingly irrelevant Tucker become all faux-earnest and bleeding heart

i think i said this last week but i hope there is some sorta earnest-teachable-moment vibe to the end of this season (it's the last/barring specials, according to ianucci, fwiw) - it's strong & realistic enough to hold weight and actually comment on the directions of politics, i hope it kinda ventures into that territory a little, a la in the loop.

his description of star wars was amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5iRmPBve80

haha yes

was this ever posted here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcFaizGw860&feature=related

Ollie's new brylcream mop is horrendous but spot on

there was a bunch of good small stuff, also, a kind of nice density of constant amusing but well rendered bullshit. i liked the straw frisbee line.

The plotting doesn't seem as manic as it used to be.

i thought that was great.

i've always wondered who malcolm's pub mates are, the kind of people who speak his language, people for whom his manner isn't a giant shock to the system, who don't cower in fear at his very presence. maybe he hasn't had mates like that for a long time. but at some point he did.

maybe the scottish guy in the earlier series?

also, while his style may be acerbic and caustic and cynical, i think malcolm's perhaps the only character in the series who genuinely gives a toss about what they are supposed to be doing - his yearning to be governing, to get power to do good, seemed entirely in earnest to me.

for the rest of em, esp ollie, its just jockeying for power for its own sake, its just a job

I thought all the criticisms applied to the first episode (autopilot dialogue, implausibility, etc) went double for this one. It must have been a challenge to know what to do with the settled cast but Nicola Murray as Leader of the Opposition defies belief to begin with and making her even more incompetent, to the point at which she can't even walk in a straight line, seems like a ropey point to start from.

Next week looks promising, though.

The dialogue worked better in this one because the characters are better developed and they didn't feel the need to spread out all the Malcolm lines among eight different people.

Nicola as Leader of the Opposition did seem to stretch credibility but hey, they elected Ed Miliband. And it was meant to convey the kind of paucity of front bench talent you get when governments have just been thrown out. There would be basically no reason for Nicola and Malcolm to even be in a room together otherwise.

I wonder if this series would have worked better had it focussed on the election and the frenzied period running up to the formation of the coalition.

I was definitely less keen on this episode than the first. I think I had a similar problem with the first few episodes of the last series until it started picking up again.

One of the reasons this episode was less manic was surely because the principal characters had nothing of consequence to actually do. But overall I thought the first episode was actually funnier.

I didn't laugh at anything in the first episode. I laughed heartily at the brainstorming session and the Star Wars bit in this therefore it wins

The Star Wars bit was great, admittedly.

It did seem that the Malcolm Tucker lines were shared out again here - you wouldn't normally get Ben or characters like Murray's assistant trying to zing him to his face.

He's not the PM's attack dog any more though, that's the thing.

Yeah, he's been neutered. I think this series could play out a nice poignant arc for him, actually, either redemptive or else a slow slide into nothingness.

And by redemptive I don't mean he somehow becomes "nice"; rather that he gets his bite back.

enjoyed this episode much more than first. trailer for third looked promising though.

This series has been v. slow compared to previous series, but I'm guessing that it's gonna heat up as the political backstabbing gets going. Thought the characters were a lot less well-defined too; Ben Swain didn't seem to have a different personality than Nicola Murray, and that seemed to come from indistinct dialogue.

also, while his style may be acerbic and caustic and cynical, i think malcolm's perhaps the only character in the series who genuinely gives a toss about what they are supposed to be doing - his yearning to be governing, to get power to do good, seemed entirely in earnest to me.

― Trad., Arrrgh (stevie)

This is an interesting angle, and I think I agree. Also he has been seen on a couple of occasions to be kind and charming with 'civilians' iirc.

He wants to be in power but we haven't seen much evidence that he wants it for any other reason than power. Certainly not from previous series.

His conversation with Ollie in the cafe doesn't really count because he was trying to get him onside.

Also he has been seen on a couple of occasions to be kind and charming with 'civilians' iirc.

yeah these are some of the best minutiae of the thick of it - malcolm showing deference to the public, to cleaners, &c, at a time when blinky ben is unaware of their status as human beings