Veep Review

Armando Iannucci's contribution was a specific comic engine: nobody in this building has a political belief, everybody has an ambition, and every crisis is caused by a small vanity rather than a conspiracy. That makes the show funnier and far more plausible than any earnest political drama, and it explains why so many actual staffers describe it as documentary. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is doing career best work, and the supporting bench, Tony Hale's cringing bagman, Anna Chlumsky's permanently furious deputy, Timothy Simons as a walking act of aggression, is the strongest ensemble in modern comedy.

The insults are genuinely literary, constructed in clauses, and they are delivered so fast that a second viewing finds new ones. It changes when Iannucci leaves. David Mandel's seasons are still very funny but broader, the abuse becomes more baroque and less observational, and the plotting drifts toward farce, with a Chinese election hack and a convention deadlock that strain the show's realism. The final season is bleak in a way that suits it.