The Thick Of It
- TV sitcom
- BBC Two / BBC Four
- 2005 - 2012
- 23 episodes (4 series)
Satirical political sitcom. Number 10's foul-mouthed policy enforcer Malcolm Tucker rules the Government's PR team with an iron fist. Stars Peter Capaldi, Chris Addison, James Smith, Joanna Scanlan, Rebecca Front and more.
Episode menu
Series 3, Episode 2
Further details
Nicola Murray MP has been Secretary of State for just over a week. Already, there is press speculation on how long she is going to last. And now, someone at the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship has completely wiped the immigration records of 170,672 people.
Who's going to get the blame? Who's going to get the job of breaking the news to Malcolm? And how is Nicola going to get through an entire lunch with the staff of The Guardian without revealing the catastrophic scale of the latest computer disaster?
Broadcast details
- Date
- Saturday 31st October 2009
- Time
- 10:10pm
- Channel
- BBC Two
- Length
- 30 minutes
Cast & crew
| Peter Capaldi | Malcolm Tucker |
| Chris Addison | Oliver Reeder |
| James Smith | Glenn Cullen |
| Joanna Scanlan | Terri Coverley |
| Rebecca Front | Nicola Murray |
| Polly Kemp | Robyn Murdoch |
| Peter Sullivan | Geoffrey (Guardian Editor) |
| Alex Lowe | John (Guardian Journalist) |
| Judith Faultless | Guardian Journalist |
| Zoe Telford | Marianne Swift (Freelance Journalist) |
| Jesse Armstrong | Writer |
| Ian Martin | Writer (Additional Material) |
| Roger Drew | Writer (Additional Material) |
| Will Smith | Writer (Additional Material) |
| Martin Sixsmith | Script Development |
| Kate Conway | Script Development |
| Simon Blackwell | Writer (Additional Material) |
| Armando Iannucci | Writer (Additional Material) |
| Tony Roche | Writer (Additional Material) |
| Sean Gray | Writer (Additional Material) |
| Armando Iannucci | Director |
| Adam Tandy | Producer |
| Mark Freeland | Executive Producer |
| Armando Iannucci | Executive Producer |
| Anthony Boys (as Ant Boys) | Editor |
| Simon Rogers | Production Designer |
Press
Den Of Geek review of episode 3.2
One of the astounding things about The Thick Of It is how quickly you get to know characters. This is only her second episode, and already we've watched a faux-perky Murray declare she is "actually quite a fun person", before descending to have "a face like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle" as her department's ineptitude is discovered by Malcolm.
Andrew Mickel, Den Of Geek, 2nd November 2009The new series continues of the fizzing, potty-mouthed political comedy created by Armando Iannucci. A week into her new job as secretary of state for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship, Nicola Murray MP (Rebecca Front) sends the government's communications team into a spin. Her department's computer system has wiped the immigration records of 170,672 people, presenting her with two daunting tasks: keeping the fact from the press, and breaking the news to the irascible Tucker (Peter Capaldi). Handling these duties of office, Murray has to sit through lunch with the staff of The Guardian without letting her department's mishap slip.
Robert Collins, The Telegraph, 31st October 2009If you want an antidote to the cross-channel razzmatazz of Saturday-night TV, you can hardly improve on The Thick of It. With its grey look, its cynicism and its torrent of profanities, it's about as far from a grinning Tess Daly as you could get. It's also horribly funny, in a nasty, mean way. "Get over here now," bawls Malcolm Tucker at hapless minister Nicola Murray after her latest gaffe, "and it might be advisable to wear brown trousers and a shirt the colour of blood..." His raw temper and sulphurous turn of phrase are at the heart of the programme but the bumbling of the civil servants is always a source of joy, too. This week they've wiped all the details of UK immigrants by mistake. Whoops. To be brutal, the characterisation isn't quite as assured as in previous series and there isn't the same streamlined brilliance to the plotting, but it's still essentially wonderful.
David Butcher, Radio Times, 31st October 2009The Thick of It: series three, episode two
A trip to the Guardian for an interview sees The Thick of It recover some of its verve.
Paul Owen, The Guardian, 31st October 2009