The Thick of It

In fairness, Peter Mannion also has a conscience. His ethics aren't always up to date, but he has very clear principles, and as I've explained, will forsake power for them.

The party Tucker works for - Blairite Labour - does indeed have principles. Individual characters do not always care though, and indeed may actively sabotage them. Glen eventually leaves the party because of people violating them. He's totally defeated when he realises the party he joined is no better, and if anything is actually worse.

I mentioned two moral characters in Nicola and Peter, but Glen is indeed a third. He doesn't always do the right thing, and he is a bit of a coward, but he's also jaded, has been there done that, and is shown very little respect by anyone. Hugh is pretty much the only character who gives a shit by the time the show begins, and even that is only because Glen can help Hugh. The way Hugh treats Terri and everyone else shows he doesn't actually care about anyone, and that includes Glen.

By the time that Hugh leaves, there's no one at all to care for Glen, even with an ulterior motive. Olly has a friendship with him, but Olly is manipulative as all Hell and exploits it to his own ends. Still, right up to the end of series 3, they're pretty close. This is because Glen brought Olly into politics in the first place, so it's a mentor-mentoree relationship ([[All There in the Manual this isn't fully explained in the show).

Yeah, that last bit is glossed over in one line in the Inquiry, but that's the only time I recall it actually being mentioned.

Also, yes, Mannion is, surprisingly, a pretty chill dude.

I just fucking love Hugh, despite whatever his actor may have done. If Ollie is a snake, Hugh is a worm that somehow managed to get into a position of some influence. He's totally inept and haggard and has no idea what he's doing, and yet he's totally self-absorbed and oblivious to the problems of other people even when those problems were directly and deliberately caused by him. It takes him the better part of an entire episode just to realize why letting Terri take the blame for his accidental email could conceivably be a bad thing, and even after he figures it out, he still goes with it without hesitation. I mean, Tucker makes a decent point about whose career would have been more harshly impacted and the long-term consequences of each option, so a decision either way could have been justified, but it's the fact that he doesn't even need to think about it that is so hilariously immoral. Or just amoral.

I love Hugh. Scandals aside, if there was anything I could change about the show, it'd be that I would have wanted to keep Hugh for the show's whole run, preferably as Minister. I mean, no offense, Nicola, but Hugh was just comedic gold.

edited 18th Mar '15 10:52:36 PM by SolipSchism

What's wrong with Mannon and why are his ethics outdated? He strikes me as a pretty dignified guy. Love the way he dresses, too; "GIVE ME MY TIE!"

Speaking as someone who's unfamiliar with British politics, I sort of equated Hugh/Nicola's party with US liberals and Mannion's party with US conservatives. Making that connection, Mannion is portrayed as an unusually chill conservative, but a conservative nonetheless. In one of his earlier episodes, the one with the argument about whether he would be tucking in his shirt or not, he drops a couple of lines that illustrate how old-fashioned he is. (The bit about yobbos, which completely escaped my understanding, although apparently it has something to do with stabbing people.)

Louts, yokels, hoodlums...

Can't help but respect the guy. Though the one guy I like even more, aesthetically speaking, is Julius Nicholson. He may be the only Englishman in this series who actually dresses properly. It's kind of shocking how bad the suits are. The West Wing, this is not. Then again, the British public would rather their politicians lived in caves, yes?

edited 19th Mar '15 9:21:03 AM by TheHandle

I dunno, he made it sound like he was pretty explicitly talking about people who stab other people.

He was referring to Lower-Class Lout s. Knife crime tends to be a problem in poor urban areas of the UK, as the gun ban, for the most part, actually works. So blades are the weapon of choice. Still illegal to carry one over 6 inches (this has resulted in people being arrested for "carrying" kitchen knives they've literally just purchased at a hardware store and are taking home), but it's very common.

The parties are late 90s/turn of the millenium Labour for Hugh/Nicola, and the present day Conservative party under Cameron for Mannion's party. Fergus and Adam are the Liberal Democrats (Adam eventually goes into politics by S4, though is at the Daily Mail before then).

As Malcolm says to Nicola early in S3, the British people don't like the idea of politicians even getting paid, let alone looking good. Point of fact - originally they didn't get paid. It was a job the nobility took on for free out of a duty to serve the country, though this required having money enough to do the job without being paid, meaning you had to be rich already. That had rather lasting and obvious consequences.

edited 19th Mar '15 4:11:15 PM by CaissasDeathAngel

Interesting. A mandarinate, where the wealthy are expected to pay themselves by exchanging favours and the like... In France things went rather differently, if you must know. Basically, Louis XIV took the nobles to court at Versailles, and appointed civil servants to do all the actual governing in Paris and such. So ministers and the like did get paid, respectably so. Nobles, on the other hand, grew more and more idle and incompetent at governing, and their eventual uselessness and utter parasite status made the Revolution a very sensible proposal. As I understand, British nobility had no trouble working and doing business and getting their hands dirty... though they strongly preferred living off a rent. It was only US "Nobility" that was obsessed with work (or at least, the appearance thereof).

edited 19th Mar '15 5:06:54 PM by TheHandle

So I just watched In The Loop.

I want to fucking cry.

I mean, it's one thing to have fucking power jockeys dancing around each other on utterly insubstantial policies that don't mean anything to anyone.

It's another entirely when they do what they did here to justify their bullshit war that got us where we are today, and when there's somewhat decent responsible people doing remotely the right thing, they get used like hand puppets through their dilated anus and then turned inside out, in the process known as 'sacking.'

The one 'good' thing about this movie is, it's full of great lines to recycle when you might need to ignominiously bully someone.

Though seeing Tucker get bullied himself was profoundly satisfactory. The war-mongering cunt.

It's a brilliant film, and not exactly inaccurate either.

Let's face it though, the "good" guys had it coming. They all knew what meaningful action they could take, but were too self-absorbed and self-protective to actually do it. Michael could have not doctored the report for example, Toby could have gone public with the leak, Simon could have actually resigned (as Robin Cook and Clare Short famously did IRL over the war), etc.

The bad guys won because they actually did what they needed to do to fulfil their aims. They were evil aims but they did it. I can't sympathise with...anyone, really.

Well, I pity the fools who barely tried to do the right thing but tried just hard enough that their careers got wrecked in the process. I genuinely pity them.

edited 7th Feb '16 1:03:20 AM by TheHandle

If you enjoy this you may want to check out Yes Minister, it's what originally inspired this, it slightly different due to be made during the Thatcher era and having the focus be not so much on the strait up politics as on the conflict between the minister (who never has his party named) and the professional civil servants who pretty much regard politicians as in the way and an obstacle to proper governance. Yes Minister is very realistic by the way, in that a high level civil servant was years later (and to no surprise) revealed to have been giving the writers information that was used for the show.

edited 7th Feb '16 5:12:06 PM by Silasw

Yes Minister has sympathetic characters and humane storylines. And good wordplay.

It just feels warmer and kinder. Humphrey has nothing on Malcolm when it comes to being a moral vacuum.

Interestingly enough, all the civil servants do in this show is obstruct and throw spanners. And, for all the focus on media spin, we see nothing on what this all looks like from the Press's point of view. Especially the Mail and the Sun, they seem like the invisible Big Bad of the show.

edited 9th Feb '16 10:00:55 AM by TheHandle

No-one has yet mentioned one of the single most vile characters I've seen on a TV series before: The Right Honourable Steve Fleming MP. He's a fairly minor character, but I find him absolutely disgusting. My skin actually crawls every time he's on screen.

The guy with the moustache? He doesn't merit hatred, he's too base.

The PM is clearly scum, though.

Fleming is hardly a nice guy, but "one of the worst characters on TV"? Really? Tucker, and The Fucker Richards are worse as far as I can tell. He's certainly vile, though supposedly had enough competence to get Labour back into power in what I assume is about 97, but on screen he just shows incompetence rather than malice.

To be sure, I can't quite put my finger on why I find him so repellent. Something about his facade of friendliness over a seething cesspool of nastiness.

At least Tucker doesn't pretend to be your friend, though he may use charm to get his way. Fleming, though...

As for The Fucker, he's one of the great One Scene Wonders. He's too entertainingly hammy.

edited 18th Feb '16 6:31:38 AM by pagad