Political comedy
The coalition will not be televised


IN MARCH, when Britain's chancellor, George Osborne, produced a budget that flopped rather spectacularly, there was a curiously postmodern touch to the reporting. The budget, said Labour ministers, was an "omnishambles". They borrowed the term from "The Thick of It", a TV programme which, since 2005, has satirised Britain's spin-obsessed, buzzword-heavy politicians and the petty world they live in. Last night, the BBC aired the first episode of the latest series, which turns the ferocious wit previously directed at the Labour administration towards the new coalition government.

Unfortunately, it didn't really work. The driving inspiration behind the original series of "The Thick of It" was New Labourand in particular, Tony Blair's chief spinner, Alastair Campbell. Mr Campbell's infamous profanity and sharp wit were amplified into the Scottish Malcolm Tucker. Tucker would rage through the anonymous government department, DoSAC, attacking its ministers. Everyone has their favourite lines"he's about as much use as a marzipan dildo", or "come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off."

This series, so far, lacks Mr Tucker (he is to reappear in next week's episode). There is, in his place, a Steve Hilton-like character who arrives from No 10, demands ginseng tea and orders ministers around, but he's no longer the main sweary-character. Instead, the wit is spread out evenly between the various characters, who insult each other gratuitously. In one scene, a minister tells an adviser that he "couldn't even keep the cast of Glee out". The adviser replies that the minister cannot ride in the secretary of state's car, as "it doesn't have child seats fitted". Then a third adviser arrives and asks, "have you two kissed?" It's all a little too sharp to be believable. The basic joke, meanwhilethat presentation matters more than policy, and that politicians are hapless, cynical, insecure incompetents, all in it for themselvesis still intact, but is getting a little flat by now.

Which is a shame, because the coalition ought to provide plenty of material for a new series. Such as the day, fairly early into the coalition, when David Cameron U-turned on one of his policiesto cut free school milk for some childreneven as the universities minister David Willetts was on air defending the idea. Or the day when Downing Street could not decide whether it backed Prince Andrew in his capacity as a trade envoy. Or the conference speech last year, when Mr Cameron's aides accidentally briefed the newspapers that he planned to tell the nation's housewives to pay down their credit cards. Or, for that matter, the "omnishambles" budget.

But then perhaps that's the problem: British politics hasn't really changed in its absurdity since Labour. And so nothing that Armando Iannucci, the brilliant and caustic writer of "The Thick of It", could come up with would easily better his previous series. "The Thick of It" changed how we viewed politicsand since then, politics hasn't really changed. It's hardly Mr Iannucci's fault: his new American series, "Veep", is as brilliant a corrective to the dewy-eyed nonsense of "The West Wing" as anyone could hope for.

Reuse this contentThe Trust Project