This Quietly Ruthless 4-Part Sitcom Left Every Other Political Satire in the Dust

When Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It launched on the BBC in 2005, there was still an element of relief in thinking the disastrous Westminster being portrayed was hammed up for television. Completely believable bureaucracy, but with too many avoidable blunders being quashed by spin to feel truly close to real life. However, The Thick of It aired 12 years before the sale of red caps and orange foundation spiked, and before the United Kingdom had a Prime Minister who, in just 44 days, buried the longest-reigning monarch and was outlasted by an iceberg lettuce. So perhaps The Thick of It didn’t go hard enough.

As a precursor to HBO’s Veep and In the Loop, The Thick of It focuses on the fictional Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship (DoSAC) and the team of civil servants trying to keep it running, with the elected Minister as the public-facing figurehead. This role is initially filled by Chris Langham’s Hugh Abbot, and later by Rebecca Front’s Nicola Murray in Season 3. Chris Addison stars as junior policy advisor Oliver Reeder, whose short romantic relationship with a journalist is often exploited for PR cover-ups. The team are equally adept at causing fires and failing to put them out in increasingly stupid ways. Their PR disasters are covered up by the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), who has gone down in TV history as one of the best characters of all time and is ultimately why The Thick of It has stuck around for so long.

What Happens in Armando Iannucci’s ‘The Thick of It’?

If you’ve only seen Peter Capaldi in Doctor Who or as the pedantic Mr Curry in Paddington, get ready for an exciting slap in the face. His Malcolm Tucker is a force, blazing into every room to give satisfyingly dark and swear-filled tongue-lashings to anyone who gets in his way. Tucker, who has “a to-do list longer than a Leonard f*cking Cohen song”, is a clean-up crew of one. He takes DoSAC’s mindless disasters (which he likens to The Shawshank Redemption “but with more tunneling through sh*t and with no f*cking redemption”) and spins them to make the government look good, while absolutely wrecking the personal lives of those responsible.

When Nicola Murray campaigns in Warwickshire alongside Liam Bentley, she is hounded with questions from the press regarding her husband’s questionable involvement with government contracts. She ends up standing in front of Bentley’s campaign poster at an angle that makes it read “I AM BENT,” which aligns rather neatly with the corruption allegations swirling around her husband. Instead of finding a credible way to fix the problem, the DoSAC team suggests creating a list of words that Ministers cannot stand in front of to make sure the press can’t pull the same trick again. Think Peacock, Shuttlecock, Spatchcock — there may be a theme here.

We already know that’s not going to be strong enough for Malcolm Tucker. He storms in, shouts at the rest of the team, who he memorably calls “Yoko Ono and the two remaining Beatles,” and gives Murray an ultimatum: either her daughter goes to a state school, or her husband resigns from his job. Cut to later in her episode, where her daughter clearly attends a private school. To ensure Tucker’s dialogue packed a punch, the scripts were sent to The Death of Stalin co-writer Ian Martin to boost the colorful language, earning him the title of the show’s “swearing consultant.”

‘The Thick Of It’ Held Up a Mirror to the “Omnishambles” of British Politics

The Thick of It became a case of life imitating art. While real politics always inspired the scripts, the scripts worryingly began to inspire politics in return. In Malcom's dressing down of Nicola after the photography fiasco in Season 3, Episode 1, Tucker describes her as “a f*cking omnishambles,” a term coined by writer Tony Roche. It was later used by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband MP, during a speech in the House of Commons, where he described the 2012 proposed financial plan as “an omnishambles Budget.” The word became so prolific in Westminster and beyond that it was formally added to the Oxford English Dictionary in August 2013. It even crossed the Atlantic, when Mitt Romney criticized preparations for the London 2012 Olympics and earned himself the moniker, “Romneyshambles.”

The Thick of It’s US influence didn’t stop there. In 2006, a failed reiteration of the sitcom was developed by Iannucci and Arrested Development’s Mitchell Hurwitz, focusing on a low-level member of the United States Congress and the daily lives of his staff, but it was canned by ABC in 2007. Iannucci later told Broadcast that he thanked God for its failure, as there was no improvisation or swearing — two of the original show’s biggest strengths. Yet in 2009, Iannucci and key production staff collaborated with HBO to write a pilot for Veep, centered on the fictional Vice President, Selina Meyer. Anchored by Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ comedic star power and supported by Anna Chlumsky and Tony Hale, Veep ran for seven seasons, culminating in 2019. Unlike her bumbling British counterparts, Meyer was more scheming, more successful, and — thankfully — even more sweary.

The Thick of It is a gloriously cynical workplace sitcom — think The Office if Michael Scott (Steve Carell) was personally eviscerated by a fired-up Scotsman. Creator Armando Iannucci described the total 23 episodes to the BBC as “Yes Minister meets Larry Sanders,” and it’s worth cringing through the completely believable situations the department gets itself into. The memorable dialogue is fast and witty, and you’ll come away having learned a few new insults to save for the next time you’re in need of them.