Review post: 'The Thick of It', ep. 8
Last night saw the final episode of the current series of The Thick of It; happily, the episode’s final scenes - of Malcolm Tucker and his new counterpart for the Opposition, Cal ‘The Fucker’ Richards (a lovely surprise appearance by Tom Hollander, previously known to us as the Minister in In The Loop)’s rousing speeches to rally their troops in preparation for a snap election - leave the way open for at least an election special, if not another full series. As Armando Iannucci has been hinting heavily in the press that he would like to make another series, we can only hope our prayers are answered and that not only are another eight episodes forthcoming, but that Paul Higgins this time returns as Jamie MacDonald, the crossest man in Scotland and the originator of some of The Thick Of It’s finest and most creative bouts of explosive obscenity.
The episode opened in the aftermath of Malcolm’s forced resignation, with speculation in DoSAC as to Malcolm’s next move (Glenn: “Malcolm will have grabbed his fake passport by now and he’ll be on his way to Brasil to spend the rest of his days as the world’s scariest dentist.”) and Malcolm despairingly running through options including authoring a children’s book entitled ‘The Angry Spider’. It was in these post-resignation scenes that we saw a side to Malcolm which has hitherto only been hinted at during his dinner party for the journos in the previous episode - this was Malcolm, dressed in a “40-tog” fleece, lying on his sofa eating Hula Hoops off his fingers in between hurling them at Andrew Neil, on the TV on ‘This Week’. It was Malcolm fabricating an important phone call in order to escape a meeting with BBC3 producers for an awful, soul-destroying show during which he would talk to other people who “like you, have been through the shit... Brian Keenan, Kerry Katona...”. How I resisted the urge to hug my TV, I honestly don’t know. As Malcolm pointed out to Olly, “Just because a man has to kill people for a living, doesn’t make him a killer”, and it was wonderful to catch glimpses of Malcolm off-duty. These scenes have been coming ever since Malcolm’s mini-breakdown in conversation with Terri a few episodes back; we’ve watched cracks appearing and the apparent downfall of his empire of spin, and now we get to see what’s left in the wake of its destruction. Beneath the bark and bite Malcolm requires in order to maintain his monopoly on the flow of information in and out of government and to keep the ministers, advisors and civil servants in line, we see a perfectly lovely man with questionable taste in casual outerwear (I’m sorry, I spent three years of my life as a chubby nine-to-twelve year old in fleeces of varying degrees of awfulness; I cannot view them with anything less than horror). It’s testament to Armando Iannucci’s skill as a writer that both sides of Malcolm’s persona are entirely believable - it’s been there for weeks in the differences between how Malcolm treats Sam, his loyal and put-upon secretary (made to cry in the immediate wake of Malcolm’s resignation by the lackeys trying to get him to vacate his office), and the rest of the twats and incompetents he has to contend with in his official capacity as the government’s ‘Gorbals Goebbels’ (or, as BBC subtitling would have it, the ‘Gorbals gerbil’).
Watching Malcolm’s return to power - from sharing a curry with Lord Julius ‘mimsy quisling leak fuck’ Nicholson (who uttered a string of wonderful lines including, as the culmination of a complicated metaphor involving Malcolm and nemesis Steve Fleming and the problems caused by a report into the fiddling of crime statistics as Indian snacks, “I am the man who makes the bhaji go away...”), to taking up office in DoSAC and offering to get everyone a cup of tea, to returning triumphant and belligerent to No. 10 to prepare for an election, was glorious. His apparent personality transplant (“Is he dying, or something?”) threw DoSAC into confusion, yet his manipulation of Nicola Murray - persuading her to agree not to accept a job with a think tank in the U.S. - was a sign that this Malcolm had lost none of his teeth. His eventual return to No. 10 to deliver the equivalent of the St. Crispin’s Day speech (“These are the kind of fucks who watched Mandela... fucking Nelson Mandela... walk to freedom and said ‘Is Diagnosis Murder not on the other side?’ - so we fucking forget about them!”) made me want to punch the air with glee.
The contrast between the government and the Opposition has never been more starkly drawn than with the introduction of a new character, referred to as ‘The Fucker’, played wonderfully by Tom Hollander in a role at the other end of the spectrum from his hapless minister in In The Loop. For a party poised to snatch the reigns of power, the Opposition are shown to be a feckless lot. Peter Mannion, of course, took the arrival of The Fucker and the announcement of a snap election in his stride (“For the first time in a decade, I can feel the old dog twitching to life!”), but his department seemed despondent rather than optimistic in the wake of The Fucker’s speech - cut to between Malcolm’s speech at No. 10 - in contrast to the cheers and applause over at government HQ.
The most interesting aspect of this series has, for me, been the distinctions Iannucci has drawn between characters such as Malcolm - in previous series implied to be the ‘the bad guy’, the Alistair Campbell-like ogre figure presiding over a regime of spin and smear tactics, and accused by Nicola of destroying public trust in politics - and utterly unpleasant, abhorrent characters such as Steve Fleming, who is repulsive in both personality and his approach to the job. This was illustrated perfectly in an exchange with Glenn and Olly, during which Glenn uttered possibly the most adorable line ever known to TV (“... Hello game, it’s Glenn!”), after which Fleming, needled to the point of an outburst by Glenn and Olly’s constant piss-taking, lost his temper only to mime ‘finding’ it again (“Lost my temper! Where is it? Where is it? Oh, I know, I’ve found it again, it’s alright!”) in the most unhinged and horrible display we’ve ever seen. Jamie may occasionally have taken things too far (“Eat the fucking cheese, Nicholson!”) and shown a wee tendency towards psychotic rages, but we still liked him. Fleming is a triumphantly, skin-crawlingly unpleasant character in every single scene, making Malcolm’s triumph over him seem wonderful and even more entirely deserved.
What was so wonderful about last night’s episode, was that every character had their moment of brilliance - from Nicola’s panic over Malcolm’s sudden reappearance in the department to Terri’s final line: “See you, Nicola... or not.” After the atmosphere of tension which has pervaded the previous episodes, this was an episode on a lighter, more optimistic note, which nevertheless lacked none of the narrative drive or drama of the rest of the series. I laughed out loud from beginning to end and was left feeling that there are great things in store for The Thick of It, and possibly even another term in government (in which case Malcolm has promised to put a word in for Nicola for a position at the Foreign Office) for Tom and Malcolm.
Quotes, the best of the rest:
Phil: [watching footage of Malcolm’s departure from No. 10] “Woo! Balrog’s dead!”
Pat: “Would you like to do ‘Dragons Den’ for Children in Need?”
Malcolm: “I’d rather fuck a real dragon.”
Glenn: “I’m going to put some feelers out but, you know, we’ll do it discretely.”
Olly: “Yeah, [to Terri] like you do on the Tube.”
Olly: “The Fucker, he comin’. He comin’ to your town.”
Malcolm: [Answering the phone] “Hello, Philip Schofield, I fuck lobsters for money.”
Julius Nicholson: “Do you know what hat it is that I’m wearing?”
Malcolm: “Is it your baldy swimming cap wig?”
Julius: “No, it is my government troubleshooter’s stetson, which is a long way from my homburg of sober enquiry.”
Malcolm: [Greeting Olly] “Heeey! Tintin’s sexy sister!”
Nicola: [in anticipation of Malcolm’s desire for revenge following her failure to save him from getting the sack] “It’ll be like ‘Kill Bill’ or ‘Get Carter’, only it’ll be ‘Get and Kill Nicola’, and then get Carter and Bill to fucking kill her too.”
Malcolm: “ ‘Forgive and forget’, that’s my motto.”
Nicola: “I thought your motto was ‘He who fucks wins’, or... ‘Honi soit qui mal y fuck’?”
Malcolm: “I’ve got a lot of mottos.”
Olly: “He’s impressive, Malcolm, in his own evil way. He’s like those women at Crufts who make dogs dance on their hind legs.”
Julius Nicholson: “Here’s the news, Malcolm: I will not eat the pissy biscuit.”
Malcolm: “Sam, no pissy biscuits!”
Steve Fleming: “I’m going to join Dan Miller’s team and then we are going to take you down. We are going to take you down to funky town. Funky town centre, here you come. Choo-fucking-choo!”
Malcolm: “Is this what you’re threatening me with? Fucking disco lines and a fucking choo-choo train? You’re a joke, Steve.”
Malcolm: “Life is just a succession of five minutes-es.”
Nicola: “Great, so you’re Buddha now, are you?”
Malcolm: “If Buddha’d been on the front cover of GQ Magazine.”
Peter Mannion: “Ah, The Fucker! And you thought he was just a myth to frighten all the naughty MPs into eating all their truffles and swan...”
Peter: “I’m sensing a change in management styles here, from touchy-feely to smashing testes.”
Cal ‘The Fucker’ Richards: “FUCK, THAT IS BRIIILLIAAANT! THAT IS INSPIRED! GET IIIN! IT’S THE ECONOMY, STEWPOT!”
Terri: [on the phone] “I think we’re playing it in the wrong key. It’s when we go ‘red and yellow and pink and blue...’”
Nicola: “What’s she talking about?”
Olly: “Oh, she’s putting on her annual production of ‘Joseph’ in Hemel Hempstead. She doesn’t license it ever, because she considers ‘Joseph’ to be public domain.”
Terri: “... but I need to pitch it a little higher. More like [sings] ‘red and yellow and blue and green...’”
Glenn: “She’s directing it, and starring.”
Olly: “... as Jacob.”
Nicola: [miming] “With the beard?”
Olly: “Well, maybe she’ll just let herself go for a couple of weeks, see what happens.”
Malcolm: “People say to you, right, they say: “I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. Everybody hates you.” So fucking what? Some people, they just fucking love to hate. Some people, they fucking walk around the fucking Garden of Eden fucking moaning about the lack of fucking mobile reception. These are the kind of fucks who watched Mandela - fucking Nelson Mandela - walk to freedom and said ‘Is ‘Diagnosis Murder’ not on the other side?’ So we fucking forget about them. [?] J.B. and Cal Richards, and their hordes of fucking robots, they’re coming up over the hill towards us, and all you’ve got to do is this: bend down, pick up any fucking weapon you can, and twat the fuckery out of them! Let’s get out there and let’s fucking kill them! Let’s set fire to tears! Let’s go!”
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