The Thick Of It

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.

Bonus material: Out of The Thick of It

How much time has Nicola Murray wasted walking up and down the stairs? Just what is going on between Glen and Robyn? And what exactly are journalists for?

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.

The 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.

The Thick of It: a whirlwind of swearing and satire

What can one reasonably expect to achieve in three minutes? It's nothing. You could get a pot of tea half-brewed, maybe, or go from 47th to 46th in the call-centre queue for O2. Clean a grill pan. Dice a kilo of lamb. Shave one leg. It's not an inspiring list.

Compare this dawdling, Neanderthal sclerosis, then, to the first three minutes of The Thick of It. The opening episode of the third series landed last Saturday night, like one of those mysterious glowing objects that crash in Oklahoma in sci-fi films, humming with advanced technology from a superior civilisation. The first three minutes went at such a pace that it was like someone sticking a whisk in your head and revving it until you had brain-meringue coming out of your eyes.

If 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.

The 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.

Armando Iannucci found life imitating art last week when the media scrum surrounding BNP leader Nick Griffin became the backdrop to an edit of The Thick of It at Television Centre. Writing in the Observer, Iannucci noted that the episode in question centred on a government department going into lock-down because of... the media outside. Suddenly, the edit - usually "about as glamorous as old trousers" - became a little more exciting; so much so, in fact, that he had to down tools and fight his way through the angry mob outside.

Out of the Loop

This once-biting political satire now feels strangely dated.

Series 3 Review

The character of Hugh Abbot, for all his faults, offered the viewer a lifeline into this alien world of honed amorality; Nicola Murray doesn't achieve that, she's just another parasite sucking the life out of the reciprocating parasites that surround her.