Joanna Scanlan on playing Terri

"Terri Coverley's natural habitat is the Buckingham Palace Garden Party. She's already been invited on six occasions. If Terri is not actually in attendance at The Palace, then she likes to dress as though she is."

Tonight's instalment of officially the best comedy on television (according to me, so there) sees the return of Roger Allam's Tory MP Peter Mannion, last seen in the fantastic specials a couple of years ago. It's a testament to the writing team that Mannion is a likable if fairly impotent character - it would have been easy to portray the Tory as slavering, smug blaggards. It's as sharp as ever, with Mannion's team attempting to capitalise on problems in Nicola Murray's private life. And of course, in the thick of it, there's Malcolm. There's always Malcolm.

The foul-mouthed misanthrope, which is what writer Armando Ianucci has constructed as a comic monster from an image of Alastair Campbell, former director of communications to Tony Blair, now has a new victim, minister Nicola Murray (Rebecca Front). She has four kids and a businessman husband, is neurotic, desperate for affection and approval, happy to blame everyone else for her mistakes - and is a media disaster waiting for its moment.

Peter Capaldi, who plays spin-doctor Malcolm, is the linchpin here, with his gaunt face - most terrible when smiling - and his conviction that all around him are guilty until their innocence is brought to him on a plate. And his terror, too - which is that of one who understands the ruthlessness of media that no longer care for fairness in their dealings or for policy in their coverage, but, like a piranha shoal, drift here and there until blood is in the water, when they swarm. The Thick of It has a solid base, but Capaldi is its on-screen genius.

Honecker's hermetic make-believe regime was eventually brought down by people power. On The Thick of It, new Labour's chief Stasi officer, Malcolm Tucker, came face to face with a real person and short circuited. She was a campaigning widow requisitioned for the annual Labour conference as its "people's champion". An ugly fight ensued over who should introduce her, the PM or Nicola Murray, his failing social affairs minister. It resulted in Glenn, Murray's all-grey special adviser, being punched in the nose by a frantic Tucker. The widow was not impressed and soon tweeted to that effect. "I should have known not to trust you lot when you sold out the metric martyrs," she told Tucker, who had met his match, namely democracy. Saturday's episode of this superb satire, contained a brief West Wing reference. These two baroquely articulate programmes are mirror images of each other. In the Bush years, America needed to be told that there was a better alternative. We British like to be reassured that our masters could be even worse.

Malcolm is to the God-like The Thick Of It what Jedward are to The X Factor. As in the love-to-hate-to-love element that keeps us coming back for more. Want to know how Simon Cowell feels when he looks at Jedward running rampant across his carefully controlled kingdom? Over to Thick Of It punchbag Glenn, who caught the sentiment perfectly: 'I feel like I'm in a therapy group being run by my own rapist.'

It's lines like that, flowing like twisted rivers of bile over characters drowning in their desperation, that lift The Thick Of It head and shoulders above the comedy competition. Sometimes the plot twists can tie you up in knots and this week the moral maze surrounding a people's champion being used as a political puppet pretty much ruptured my blind alley. But then a clueless PR with the social skills of a baboon who explained his presence thus - 'I'm the Nazi guard... only in a non-gassy way' - had me howling too much to care.

Den Of Geek review of episode 3.3

This was another typically strong episode, and there are signs that my previous concern - that the satire on show was mildly dated - is just a sign that the eight-episode run is planning to fully plot the last two years of decline for the governing party.

The Thick of It: series three, episode three

Malcolm's verbal attacks are terrifying enough. But things take a rather stronger turn...

More satirical spin doctoring and creative swearing as Armando Iannucci's political sitcom continues to prowl the corridors of power. It's party conference season, meaning that new Secretary of State Nicola Murray (Rebecca Front, a superb addition to the cast this series) is stuck in an Eastbourne hotel room, writing her speech. No matter how many mini-kettlefuls of coffee they make, however, she and her right-hand oaf Ollie (Chris Addison) can't quite nail it. Until, that is, her hapless adviser Glenn (James Smith) wheels in his secret weapon: a tragic local widow.

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. Of course, she's being stalked by the godfather of spin, Malcolm Tucker, who continues his pitiless assault on Murray's self-confidence. Tucker (Peter Capaldi) manages to torpedo Nicola's big conference speech by hijacking her "applause monkey", a media-savvy, Twitterwise member of the public with a sad story. Yet again, watching Armando Iannucci's withering satire 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" - that's packed with macho posturing from egomaniacal men behaving like competitive baboons. And it's brilliant.

Miles Jupp on being in The Thick of It

When it comes to contrasts, few shows can be quite so... contrasty as Balamory and The Thick of It. Yet Miles Jupp has made his mark on both.