Peter Capaldi: Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie love TTOI

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie love spin doctor Malcolm Tucker's four-letter rants in The Thick Of It, says Peter Capaldi.

Getting On (Wednesday, BBC Four), an understated comedy set in a drab NHS ward is luckily still going. It is telling that there is a Thick of It connection, with Peter Capaldi directing early episodes. It stars, and is written by, Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan (another stalwart from The Thick of It).

I love the washed-out almost monochrome palette, the wobbly camera work, the avoidance of a laughter track, the naturalistic dialogue.

In the latest episode earnest, politically correct former Matron turned Business Consultant Hilary Loftus (Ricky Grover) was on fine form making sure all electrical appliances were turned off as part of a new green initiative. If you have had any experience of the NHS you will appreciate that this is depressingly well observed.

So farewell then to BBC2's The Thick Of It. And a special '****ety-bye' to Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker. We will probably never see their like on TV again.

If I was being picky I might say I would have preferred it if Tucker had bowed out with the penultimate episode's withering government inquiry speech. But now is not the time for being picky. Now is the time to order the box set.

Fallout from last week's inquiry is inevitable, particularly when we saw Malcolm as we've never seen him before: hunted, on the run and lost for words. So, as the series ends, everyone at DoSac is feeling the pressure of the revelations into the Tickell debacle/tragedy.

Communications are clipped to nonexistent as the government's problems continue. In one last desperate throw of the dice, Malcolm (Peter Capaldi) sends shiny Dan Miller on a fact-finding mission.

Though its fourth season has been its least impressive, Armando Iannucci's political satire will none the less go down as one of the best ever British comedies: sharp and cynical. Tonight, after last Saturday's excellent Leveson and Chilcot-inspired special, it finally bows out, with an instalment overflowing with delicious duplicity and inventive insults - not least from Malcom Tucker (the ever-wonderful Peter Capaldi) who gives Ollie Reader (Chris Addison) a hilarious dressing down.

The episode picks up with the Home Office having cut police numbers, which in turn has created a huge backlog of arrest paperwork. Cleverly, however, they've managed to shift the blame onto the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship for the burgeoning queues at police stations. "I doubt there are any major criminals on the loose," says Phil Smith (Will Smith). "This is about paperwork; it's not Con Air." Elsewhere, Dan Miller (Tony Gardner), at Malcolm's suggestion, is sent on a fact-finding mission to a police station in an attempt to make the Government look unresponsive. To say any more about the plot would give too much away, but viewers can expect a climax that is as poignant as it is amusing.

Jo Brand's superlative Getting On returned for a third series. Thanks to its vérité stylings and politically inflected setting, this barely-comedy set in the NHS backwaters has oft been compared with The Thick of It, while shamefully acquiring nothing like its profile. Meanwhile, their fundamental differences are encapsulated in their respective main characters' voices: Peter Capaldi's barbaric bark and Brand's low-level drone.

Anyway, last week's opener had the central trio - Brand's nurse, Joanna Scanlan's matron, and Vicki Pepperdine's fabulously callous doctor - in a new-fangled ward but struggling with the usual mix of bureaucratic absurdities and each other. That it successfully interwove a distressing scene of an old woman having a panic attack and the line "I think you would have enjoyed getting your teeth into my vaginal atrophy" tells you all you need to know about the show's rare, nay American, sophistication.

TV review: The Thick Of It deep in inquiry soup

Without the swear words, it proved that Tucker's uniqueness is not just down to his very blue syntax, as Peter Capaldi wrung every fibre of expression out of his rubber face in a tour de force performance, for which Bafta must surely come a-calling.

The award-winning political satire spoofs a governmental inquiry in an hour long special possibly inspired by the Leveson inquiry but bearing a greater resemblance in its staging to the Chilcot inquiry into Iraq. In the aftermath of the suicide of a key-worker after his flat was sold off, an inquiry has been called. Lord Goolding and his team of three inquisitors have little patience for the nervous rambling and impenetrable politician-speak of those giving evidence.

The civil servants, government and opposition troop in, each pointing the finger at the others. The sight of foul-mouthed media advisor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), in particular, speechless and unable to dig himself out of a self-created hole is a joy to behold. As the entire episode is focused on the inquiry itself, the inventive swearing is mostly absent, instead the delight comes from watching each character struggle to answer questions without ending up in further trouble. Occasional moments descend into panto but with writing this exceptional, it's easy to forget we're watching a fictional inquiry.

Interview: Jo Brand on Getting On

The creator-star of the BBC Four hospital sitcom on Peter Capaldi, comedy and the cuts.

Peter Capaldi's comedic monster, Malcolm Tucker, has surely never performed a more ruthlessly cruel demolition job than the gutting he gave Nicola Murray MP on last night's The Thick Of It. 'You have all the charm of a rotting teddy bear at a graveside' is certainly up there with this comedy's best-ever lines.

But I do have some bad news for Tucker: Peter Mannion MP has emerged as the main man this series. He's even started to swear better...