Whereas its spiritual predecessor Yes, Minister offered a world of polished deceit and gentlemanly obstruction, The Thick of It proves rather more profane in its satire.
Here, ministers are compromised, mandarins panicked, and all perpetually on the verge of professional extinction. The engine of this chaos is, of course, Malcolm Tucker, played with volcanic precision by Peter Capaldi.
Tucker is less a character than a force of nature who communicates
