The Thick of It Review

Iannucci shoots it like a documentary crew that got in by mistake: handheld, overlapping, the camera arriving half a second late to every disaster. That looks cheap and it is the point. The Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship is a place where nothing is produced except press lines, and the series never once shows a policy working. What it shows is the panic around one. Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker is why most people remember it, and the writing gives him invective of real invention, built out of Scottish rhythm and Latinate construction rather than volume.

Chris Langham plays Hugh Abbot as a man drowning politely, Rebecca Front takes over as Nicola Murray and finds a different species of failure, and Roger Allam's Peter Mannion proves the joke works just as well pointed at the opposition. The ensemble matters: Joanna Scanlan, James Smith and Chris Addison never play for laughs and the show is funnier for it. The objections are real. Plot is thin by design, most episodes are a single crisis inflated and then deflated, and the swearing became a brand that fans quote and the series itself eventually tires of.

The fourth run, built around an inquiry, is slower and sadder and a little pleased with itself. But the ear is unmatched. Watch a modern political scandal unfold and you can hear this show being written in real time.