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

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

I'm searching for the word to describe the feeling this season, I think 'lethargic' might be it? There is this sense of futility and absurdism hanging over it all. We've seen the minister change, we've seen the prime-minister change, and now we've seen a change in government. And nothing really changes at all. I think that might be why it seems less plotted and manic, there was this sense of struggles on the horizon in the specials and the third series, and now all it's all over with, and people don't know what to do.

apparently something big (possible Leveson-ish) is coming up though

i've enjoyed this season less than the rest - though we're only two eps in, and i did really enjoy the last one. could it just be diminishing returns? i stopped watching veep after three episodes tbh, because it just seemed like a lesser TTOI.

have any of iannucci's projects made it to a fourth series thus far? maybe longevity of an idea or format isn't his thing - he's brilliant in short bursts though.

Longevity in sitcoms is never a good thing though, they always run out of ideas. It's a truism but that's why Fawlty Towers and The Office were so great, they knew when to stop. The Thick of It should have called it a day after the last series.

seems kinda premature imo

& i think analysing the success of ianucci's projects according to their # of series is k skewed, too, because they've all been so irregular (cf the thick of it, which is at four 'series' of different kinds, the third probably the only conventionally 'series-esque' one) - it isn't like the office, at which its longevity or appeal is evident by it getting reupped, but they've all had weird arcs. the many projects of alan partridge would prob counter yr stat also.

gah you british people your shows don't make any sense, why bother trying to analyze anything that's not 22 half-hour episodes long

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_maisssF8YK1qz6f9yo1_500.jpg

peter capaldi is a really amazing actor.

otm

Best of this series so far.

like how there's no effort to humanise the Lib Dems at all

moral abattoir

A dummy asks: what does ""Let's McIntyre this" mean?

Stand up and walk about a bit while you're talking, I assumed. Or point out really obvious things as if you're the first person to have observed them.

ha at the latter, from an insight-vacuum like Stewart it just means exactly what he annotated it as in the same sentence though