By Helen Daly

Published: Monday, 22 August 2022 at 12:00 am


Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It might have ended in 2012, but that hasn’t stopped it being mentioned almost every time there’s a political storm – which is pretty much daily, at the moment.

His foolish and cumbersome characters lied, cheated and bluffed their way to the top of politics, and some of their antics became scarily real life.

RadioTimes.com recently caught up with Roger Allam, who starred as Peter Mannion MP in the satire, to reflect on the popularity of the series.

Does he think there’s space for the show to return, especially now the political landscape is different?

“I don’t know, it’s interesting, isn’t it?,” he said. “I mean, it’s bleaker [in real life] in many different ways. When it [The Thick of It] started, things were more optimistic, we were still in the Blair government.

“There wasn’t a war in Europe, there wasn’t a cost of living crisis, there wasn’t an economic disaster that I don’t know where it would sit now.”

Allam continued: “Possibly… I mean, someone would have to do something different, invent something different and brilliant to make a political satire now.”

Iannucci previously ruled out any more episodes of The Thick of It.

Writing in a New Statesman column, via The Guardian, the creator explained: “No, absolutely not. I now find the political landscape so alien and awful that it’s hard to match the waves of cynicism it transmits on its own. Fiction is winning out because fact is no longer making sense.”

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