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The Thick of It (UK): Season 4 Premiere

By Andrew Watson · September 11, 2012

There is a stunning moment of realisation for Peter Mannion (Roger Allam) as he is driven away from the wreckage of another policy in tatters. He turns to his Coalition partner, Fergus (Geoffrey Streatfeild) and wearily states “Maybe it would be better if we tried to get along instead of just pretending to.” Right there, both men in that car know the absolute folly of their relationship, and the mistakes that way will be doomed to repeat. Politics are vitally important in the organising and running of a society, and yet it is also a poison. That poison permeates every inch of the political machine, causing chaos. Good policies are sunk to the bottom while bad policies fester at the top and people with noble intentions either turn into hideous jackals or are crushed by them. The Thick of It has used this as a theme over the years, aiming its barbs at the Labour government and the force of nature known as the spin doctor. With Labour’s election defeat in 2010, they are in the doldrums. The Thick of It needs a new target for its abuse, and in the way that art imitates life, life has handed them a doozy.

Replicating the real life coalition government, the factious department of DoSac (Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship) sees a radical overhaul: the Labour government (and a lot of cast regulars) are gone and are replaced by the turbulent partnership of the right wing Conservatives and the left wing Liberal Democrats. Tory Mannion is named minister with Lefty Fergus as his junior, a relationship they both treat with contempt (“I say we’re partners; he’s Lewis, I’m Morse”). As the first episode of the new series unfolds, the relationship does not get better. Fergus’s big project, an initiative to encourage students to make educational apps for schools, is taken out of his hands by the Prime Minister and handed to Mannion, a technophobe who is ridiculed by his colleagues as being unable to right click a mouse (“he CAN right click a mouse, it’s the trackpad he has trouble with”). This comprises The Thick of It’s A-plot.

And with the new bunch of characters introduced this series, the standout one so far has been Mannion. At first glance he is a stereotypical Tory, old and disconnected with the 21st century. His attempt to launch the initiative in a school leads to him being accidentally racist to a student, and his attempts to explain something he cannot comprehend sees him spiral into ever fragmented sentences. At the same time though, there is something quite likable about him. He has a hangdog look which visualises his cynicism, he is someone who knows the game and perhaps has more wisdom than his colleagues give him credit for. The best moments are when Mannion becomes rattled, as he descends into petty childishness (“F**k you, you’re not getting in MY car”). He also has the B-plot, in which during this farcical sideshow he has to put himself through, it is also his 30th wedding anniversary. The poison that permeates politics has also killed his marriage as his wife becomes increasingly unhappy.

That poison extends to the rest of the department, who have a fraught relationship with each other often descending into outright cattery and The Thick of It’s trademark insults, as the two parties in the department reach boiling point. Alongside the Mannion/Fergus bickering there are also their underlings Phil (Will Smith) and Adam (Ben Willbond) who are constantly trading barbs. In an inferior screenplay, this is where The Thick of It could fall down, as trying to write smart characters can often have the effect of every character sounding the same. However, The Thick of It avoids this by carefully choosing how their characters speak and giving the text a variety. Phil is a particularly good example of this, the one guy in the group trying to trade witty insults with the rest of them but lacking the verbal dexterity that often leads to being shot down.

With all that going on, spare a thought for poor Terri and Glenn. The C-plot sees the two civil servants stay in the department after Labour’s departure and struggle to find their place within a new regime. Glenn (James Smith) jumped ship to the Liberal Democrats before the election only to find himself being marginalised and humiliated by Conservatives while Terri (Joanna Scanlan) is trying to manufacture her own redundancy (“Consider yourself redundant, we all do”). Those two characters are so far the only remnants of the previous cast, and there is a moment of disappointment that the show’s talisman and expletive machine Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) is no longer marauding the corridors of power.

Despite that, the show holds up well in his absence. It is a tentative episode that could perhaps have a bigger punch line, but the wrath of new characters that have to be introduced made it a difficult episode to pull off, and writer Will Smith does a good job of it. Season four looks likely to be the biggest series of The Thick of It yet, as the teaser for next week’s episode reveals that for the first time they will be covering both the party and the shadow opposition, which gleefully means more Malcolm.