In November 2005, Chris Langham was arrested in connection with paying to access indecent and abusive images of children on the Internet. Six months later he was charged with 15 counts of downloading indecent images of children.
ARMANDO IANNUCCI, CREATOR: It was difficult with Chris because he was charged but there wasn’t a trial. I decided to not make a judgment until there was a judgment. I didn’t realize the trial would take over 18 months. That’s why we did two one-hour specials where Hugh was referred to but wasn’t in it. But then he was found guilty so it became very clear.
ADAM TANDY, PRODUCER: When Chris was found guilty we had to recast. That’s when Rebecca joined us.
Rebecca Front, played social affairs secretary Nicola Murray: The first time I watched The Thick of It, I thought: “Blimey, this is good.” I didn’t know they were casting or even making another series. I had a conversation with Armando and he said they were going to do another and halfway through it I thought: “Hang on, is he offering me something?”
Iannucci: Nicola was the thing Malcolm hated the most, which was a minister who actually believed in something. Most of that third season was her ambitions being gradually whittled away.
Front: They didn’t know that much about my character at the beginning, just that they liked the idea of it being a woman and a backbencher who had been promoted beyond anyone’s expectations. And so one of the inspirations for Nicola Murray was very much me! Armando asked if I was politically minded and I told him that I had formed our sixth-form debating society. I actually did think of going into politics because I had really strong opinions about certain things like nuclear disarmament. Nicola is basically me if I’d had my life ruined by politics.
Iannucci: The show is a window into bullying culture. In several episodes Malcolm explicitly states that he is a bully. He pulls people apart. You wouldn’t be allowed to operate like that today. I’m sure it’s still highly charged and people shout at each other but I don’t think that single-minded, laser-like destruction of people’s personalities would be tolerated.
Front: I’d never met Peter before. I knew him mainly as Malcolm Tucker. My first impression was of this charming, gentle man. I thought: “Oh, he’s absolutely gorgeous.” And then we did a little bit of improv and he immediately turned into Malcolm. It was terrifying. A total physical change.
PETER CAPALDI, PLAYED DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS MALCOLM TUCKER: Did I feel like I was scaring people? No, they all scared me! They’d all been to Oxford and had been on telly for years. I was just a guy from bands in Glasgow who ate curries and drank lager.
Front: It’s weirdly easy to distance yourself from the script. You think: “They’re not saying that about me, they’re talking about Nicola.” However, I do remember improvising in a rehearsal room and Peter saying: “What are those fucking boots, you’re not a fucking cowgirl!” and me thinking, “Those are my actual boots, I only bought them last week!”
Iannucci: Did we ever overstep the line? Actors came into it knowing that they were going to be in line for lots of visual takedowns. But we would check in case they thought: “No I don’t want someone saying that about me on national television.” Chris [Addison] was described as looking like a Quentin Blake cartoon … but I think he rather liked that one.
FRONT: It was easy to act terrified and cowed but nobody wants to see a woman being terrified by a bully. So I thought let’s see what happens if I stand up to Malcolm, and I think immediately it started to be funnier because it was no longer just Peter shouting at somebody. You want at least one Tuckering per episode, but that can’t be the whole relationship. So Nicola ends up constantly doing things that she knows will piss him off.
Capaldi: All Malcolm’s doing is his job, you know? The idea that he’s monstrous … he’s horrible to people, but he’s moving the government’s agenda forward.
FRONT: I hope people can sympathize with Nicola because she really gets trampled by it. She goes in with all guns blazing, but really by the end of her first episode she’s already been chewed up and spat out.
Iannucci: A lot of junior spads see Malcolm as an ideal to aim for. But if you analyze any episode it’s always: something small happens that’s bad, then Malcolm comes in, makes it worse, and then leaves blaming everyone else. So how is he good in any way? It’s like when Dominic Cummings came in. People said he’s an amazing communicator and an amazing strategist … but the Covid crisis had no strategy and terrible communication.
IAN MARTIN, SWEARING CONSULTANT: Some of the lines you wouldn’t do now. They’re a tiny bit misogynistic and tiny bit homophobic. I was always a bit uncomfortable with that stuff.
IANNUCCI: It’s a stupid, macho, testosterone-fueled environment, slightly thuggish. But it’s all verbal. These people wouldn’t last 10 seconds in an actual fight. They probably don’t even go to the gym because they haven’t got time. They just drink lots of coffee from 5am and shout … it’s a stupid and frankly inefficient way of working. And then when they all leave politics they all talk about mental health and do lots of charity work in big thick jumpers!
JOANNA SCANLAN, PLAYED DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS TERRI COVERLEY: At the beginning, before Rebecca came in, I was the only woman. I wouldn’t say I was frightened, but they were all a foot taller than me. I was on my own with these tall men and thinking: “How do I get heard in this world?” It did get quite aggressive and braying with that masculine energy. One day it went too far. People were throwing insults around that you just wouldn’t do in an office. Armando stopped the improvisation and said: “That’s not truthful.” He was brilliant like that.
FRONT: One of Armando’s great gifts is that he can push things a very long way and yet stay just the right side of it. It comes, I think, from him having a very strong moral compass. The joke always comes from the right direction.
Martin: I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Terri. I even remember apologizing to Jo at one point. She was the butt of so many jokes. She was roundly criticized by everybody right from the very first episode until the very last one she appeared in. It was always “she’s fucking useless, I hate her” and everything. And yet she was no more incompetent than the people complaining about her.
Tandy: I’d seen some Ofcom research that said that people were less bothered by swearing now than they had been. So I thought, well, it’s a digital channel, we’ll probably get away with it. We actually got very few complaints about language. So I’m glad I held my nerve.
CAPALDI: I think because I’m from Glasgow the swearing came very naturally. Sometimes a “fucking” in the middle of a sentence can propel it forward with a new energy. But often I would swear because I couldn’t remember my lines. It would take a fucking minute or two for me to fucking remember the line that I fucking forgot. So I would be searching desperately for the line … and then it would fucking arrive!
MARTIN: I think the BBC quite liked the mythology of me being hired as a “swearing consultant”. The idea that they’d solemnly brought in this kind of craftsman of the swear. It did rankle with everybody else a little bit because they all did excellent swears, too.
TANDY: There was one occasion where there was a particular swear that was judged to be offensive and we were asked to make an edit quite late in the day. I think it might have been the word “gash”, which was replaced with the word “cave”. That’s sort of worse, isn’t it?
MARTIN: Great swearing is all about getting the balance right. It’s no different to writing poetry, a novel or a stupid haiku. All the lines I loved were by other people. I loved “Tinker Tailor Soldier cunt” – that was a Simon Blackwell line.
TANDY: Sometimes it was awful. There was one episode where we had I think well over 100 uses of just the f-word. That’s not including the other swear words. But then they said: “Do you think you could take what you do with The Thick of It and turn it into a feature film?” We thought about it for about, I don’t know, 15 seconds. And then In the Loop came together within the next 18 months, which is very quickly for a feature film.
IANNUCCI: In the Loop made sense because The Thick of It arose after the invasion of Iraq, where everyone across the board at the time was saying: “This will be an almighty mistake,” and yet it went ahead anyway. I was intrigued as to why it is that someone can do that and get away with it and not be stopped, even though we’re in a democracy with an opposition and a kind of shared responsibility. So what’s happened that has meant No. 10 can drive through anything it wants?
Scanlan: I loved our trip down to Eastbourne for the party conference in series three. That was my most enjoyable day. Which is ridiculous because I’m basically just saying I like going on holiday, which is very much what Terri would say.
FRONT: My favorite moment? I liked it when Nicola has a breakdown during the party conference. It was fun to film, actually. We established that, like me, she is prone to panic attacks … so it felt entirely honest that she would jump up and down on the cushions like that. I thought: “I know if I do this it will make Armando laugh.”
TANDY: I remember when we did the inquiry episode, Armando and I basically arranged it so that only the people on the panel had the full script. They didn’t even get to meet the cast regulars, who were appearing as witnesses, beforehand.
CAPALDI: I love the idea of playing husks. Malcolm loved his job, he was addicted to it. But I think when it’s all over and he’s in the back of the car after leaving the police station, he’s relieved that the shit is over. His last words to the press are “It doesn’t matter” … because it doesn’t matter! The world continues stumbling to oblivion irrespective of what he thinks.
JAMIE CAIRNEY, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: That whole final scene was emotional to shoot. We got a close-up on Peter’s face and drove around for about 15 minutes thinking this would be an amazing shot to run really long. And in true Thick of It style, Armando cut it after about five seconds: “Malcolm Tucker’s done. Let’s move on.”
TANDY: To begin with, politicians were quite cagey about the show. Whenever you met them they would say: “Oh I don’t watch that thing,” but they absolutely did – they were able to quote you huge chunks of it!
IANNUCCI: Ed Miliband used the word “omnishambles” and David Cameron said the opposition were like “an episode of The Thick of It”. I thought: if politicians are now embracing this then it’s time for something else to start challenging them back.
TANDY: I think it did have an effect on the Westminster bubble. I don’t know if it was a very good one, though, because I think it sort of normalized slightly loutish behavior.
IANNUCCI: Did it change anything? I don’t know. If it awoke people into thinking: “How can we change things?” then that would be a good thing. But 20 years on, it hasn’t exactly led to a better politics, has it?
SCANLAN: It was the last gasp of a time when there was still some respect for politicians. Arguably The Thick of It played a role in the de-escalation of respect for politicians.
SARAH CROWE, CASTING DIRECTOR: It was a defining career moment for some people and a reinvention for others.
CAPALDI: After The Thick of It I realized that my voice had become more sinister. It got a bit lower, a bit stranger.
MARTIN: I’d had a miserable 90s, chugging along doing bits and bobs as a musician and journalist. The Thick of It absolutely saved me. It couldn’t work now. There’s no shame any more, is there? I mean, in the early episodes you had characters saying: “For God’s sake, please don’t tell me you’ve lied to a committee!” The idea that someone’s career could be at stake over a lie they told to parliament has no traction now. People do it all the time. Blatantly.
IANNUCCI: Has it stood the test of time? I’ve never gone back and watched it. I’ve had people message over the years saying we should make a Brexit one or a coronavirus one … but we never did things around specific incidents. We set it in a parallel world where some of these things sort of happened but were bound up with things that were completely made up, so that it wouldn’t date.
CAPALDI: People often ask if Malcolm’s going to move into podcasting. It might be good for him to do a kind of country podcast, actually, where he wanders around the countryside, meeting people he can’t fucking stand, like farmers.
SCANLAN: It’s a show that really appeals to 15- and 16-year-olds. They’ll say: “Are you Terri from The Thick of It?” So it’s given me a strange lifeline into youth culture.
CAPALDI: Three people came up to me yesterday in Soho to say it was their favorite program. I met Brian Cox [Logan Roy in Succession] the other day and he told me with great delight that people come up to him and ask him to tell them to fuck off. I didn’t like to tell him that I’ve been doing that for 20 years now.
Tim Jonze is the associate editor at Guardian Culture
