It's party conference season and hapless Secretary of State of Social Affairs and Citizenship Nicola Murray is in Eastbourne with her team of self-serving apparatchiks, as the repeats of series three of Armando Iannucci's satire continue on Gold. Yet again, watching is like being caught in a firestorm of expletives and deliriously offensive jokes. It's a relentlessly testosterone-charged world - Nicola Murray even remarks at one point, "It's like being trapped in a boys' toilet" - packed with macho posturing from egomaniacal men behaving like competitive baboons. And it's brilliant. Look out for the memorable scene where Malcolm Tucker gets physical with a misguidedly assertive Glenn.

Spin doctor Malcolm Tucker is back in a blizzard of vituperation as Gold repeats series three of Armando Iannucci's peerless political satire. Tucker is doling out his "verbal colonics" to a new Secretary of State (splendid Rebecca Front, in a role that won her a Bafta). The inventive expletives bounce off the walls in firework displays of pure filth and bad taste. The dexterousness of the insults remains a marvel, as does the sublime supporting cast - Chris Addison and James Smith - of useless apparatchiks.

Video: Iannucci on Alan Partridge in the digital age

As Alan Partridge returns for more of his web-only series, Catherine Gee talks to the men behind it, Armando Iannucci and Henry Normal.

Armando Iannucci interview

Armando Iannucci talks about the new Alan Partridge projects and the new series of The Thick Of It.

The wobbly camerawork, as if shot by a team of four-year-olds who have run off with the digicam; the mournfully drab municipal setting; the absence, God forbid, of a laugh track; the studiedly natural dialogue. The Office begat The Thick Of It which begat this, a downbeat comedy set on an anonymous NHS ward. It came as no surprise that this, the first episode of the second series (I've come to it late), was directed by Peter Capaldi and starred Joanna Scanlan - each a first-class honours graduate of the Armando Iannucci school of comedy.

And this, being the series opener, it was appropriate that this most self-effacing of entertainments kept the action to the bare minimum. An unconscious old homeless person was admitted whom neither Nurse Den Flixter (Joanna Scanlan) nor her underling Kim Wilde (Jo Brand) really wanted to deal with. A little later, a woman visited her ailing mother and challenges Dr Pippa Moore (Vicki Pepperdine) about the level of pain relief available. That was it. The comedy, such as it was, peeped out from the fraught exchanges between Den, Dr Moore and the male Matron Hilary (Ricky Grover) as they tussled for the upper hand among the dank beds and grey windows. Kim meanwhile rolled her eyes and tried to keep out of trouble.

Yet, days later, it's not the comedy that stays with you, but the show's portrait of the NHS in miniature. Brand, Pepperdine and Scanlan are co-writers, and one assumes Brand's early career as a psychiatric nurse keeps the tone right, if not the up-to-the-minute detail. The passage of the homeless woman from Kim and Den, to the reluctant care of a junior house officer, to the corridor as they try to offload her on another ward was as understandable as it was distressing. Similarly, a well-informed woman's request that her mother's meds be amped up wasn't so much wryly amusing as it was useful - so that, you thought, is how you get someone to pay you proper attention: bone up on the internet, be endlessly polite and don't let them off the hook.

Armando Iannucci 'producing White House comedy for HBO'

Armando Iannucci, the creator of The Thick Of It and In The Loop, has reportedly turned his attention to US politics and is developing a television comedy about a female Vice-President.

Iannucci 'is editing Partridge vodcasts'

Armando Iannucci has confirmed that he is currently editing a series of online Alan Partridge web episodes.

Iannucci details 'In The Loop' follow-up

Armando Iannucci has revealed the storyline for Out The Window, his follow-up to the Oscar-nominated political comedy In The Loop.

Iannucci: 'Now is not the time for a crap opposition'

Armando Iannucci, creator of The Thick of It, is Britain's greatest political satirist in recent years. So, when is he going to sink his teeth into the coalition?

US cable network Comedy Central has ordered a pilot based on the satirical UK history series Time Trumpet, which originally aired over six parts on BBC2 in 2006.

The format was created by UK comic Armando Iannucci and Comedy Central has asked him to oversee the US adaptation, according to US trade THR. If picked up for a series, it could launch in 2011.