The Thick of It
Timing is everything. Which may help explain why, after a nearly three-year delay, BBC America is finally importing the third season (from 2009) of the blistering political satire The Thick of It to its "Ministry of Laughs" weekend franchise (Saturday, midnight/11c) — on the heels of HBO's launch of Veep, which springs from the same demented imagination of dark farceur Armando Iannucci.
Thick set the tone of deeply cynical, bitterly vicious, and scaldingly profane high-office shenanigans that Veep is adapting with some success.
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So funny it hurts, so savage it's scary. That's the classic British way with comedy and satire, as fans of the original Office can attest.
In much the same vein, including shaky hand-held cameras to give a documentary-style sense of realism (with nausea as a possible side effect), BBC America delivers another painfully hilarious winner in The Thick of It (Fridays at 9 pm/ET), about a government minister so ineffectual and insecure he makes the Office manager look like Boss of the Year.
As the six-episode series opens, the minister for social affairs is being fired by the show's reptilian villain, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), the prime minister's hatchet man. Filling this vague position with misguided optimism and bumbling social awkwardness comes po
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