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

Was this not on last night? Not on iPlayer.

no, Beatles retrospective thingy. Cos you can never have enough of those

Stoked for the Goolding Enquiry

<3ing Mannion

didn't *enjoy this one so much, but it's clearly preamble for the main event next week.

Not quite sure why there'd be an enquiry into leaking, as opposed to, like, the complete lack of ethics that could lead to an email chain taking the piss out of a dead dude.

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.