(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) An almost unheard of 5 snouts up for The Thick of It a hilarious British television series that satires government and press. It features Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker the Prime Minister’s foul-mouthed Scottish enforcer, constantly appearing out of nowhere in the Secretary of State for Social Affairs offices with Chris Langham as a brilliant deadpan Cabinet minister.
The main thing is the brilliant comic writing. This is one of those series, like the British Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm that is painfully brutal and spot on. I’m finding I need a break between shows of a week or more to recapture my equilibrium.
We found it because we watched In the Loop, which is a full-length film based on The Thick of It. I think I forgot to blog about that but I’d give it a solid 4 snouts, maybe withhold the 5 because it’s more of a television than a movie plot, but it’s devastatingly funny and somehow Malcolm Tucker is even more obscene in his excoriations of the minister. You never see or hear the PM in these–just his enforcer who is almost invariably displeased with what the minister has been doing forcing them to dial back public positions in the most ludicrous possible ways.
This is George Orwell meets Dickens meets Ricky Gervais. See them both.