📺 HGWIR: The Thick of It and Veep 📺

My Homburg of sober enquiry.

When he talks about Hugh doing the week at the coal face he says “I fashioned the narrative n****** as they say in Brixton” I get why it was included as he is meant to be an awful person but, it is still really jarring watching it back.

Probably my most rewatched show after Partridge

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Love the bit where Julius and Glenn (I think?) are listening to TMS.

Love all of it tbh

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Favourite bit is Jamie telling Ben he doesn’t deserve to live when they’re on the way back from Newsnight.

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Are you a horse?

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Tried to watch the first season of Veep twice and never got past the first few episodes. Something about it feels really unnatural compared to The Thick of It that I could never get over. The swearing and metaphors just felt a lot more laboured. Inessential.

Other than maybe the lib dems in the last series it just absolutely nails all of the characters. So many arseholes but writing them so a hint of humanity and pathos comes through is really remarkable, especially given the ridiculous hit rate of jokes in the script. About as good as comedy writing gets

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Veep is great for the first few seasons and still very watchable now. It’s definitely become a lot more broad though, and you can see that lines just exist to set up punchlines which never used to be the case.

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This is exactly why I love the inquiry episode. Seeing these utter weasels being made to try and justify their behaviour.

‘You’ve just taken a shit with your clothes on’ my go to quote when someone fucks up.

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I do think it was more fun when she was actually VP, now it’s more generic politics satire and so feels a bit more stale as a result.

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My favourite bit will always be the “I AM A HUMAN BEING!!” Speech by Glenn in Spinners and Losers.

Also like Tucker losing it in the car after Nicola takes the stairs in The Guardian and the freelancer overhears the chat.

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Capaldi’s delivery of that bit is amazing

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David Haig as Steve Fleming is fucking brilliant.

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“It’s not buttering any parsnips anymore, BROTHER!”

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His fighting with the seatbelt. Amazing.

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maybe the 2 most perfectly cast shows of all time

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Stewart and Peter Mannion both trying to find phone signal on a children’s slide…

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TTOI is a stone cold 5/5. Genuinely could spend hours in this thread just quoting it (don’t worry, I’ll restrain myself).

Veep peaked at about season 4/5 I think (the latter of Ianucci’s run). Some INCREDIBLE characters (Jonah, Richard T Splett, Amy, Mike Gary) and performances but don’t think the format works quite as well with US politics.

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“I cannot believe the energy going into Andy Murray!”

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