Armando Iannucci

Armando Iannucci: Ending will leave you wanting more

Armando Iannucci has promised The Thick Of It fans that the final ever series of the political satire will leave them craving more - and he's even hinted that there might be more to come.

Though its fourth season has been its least impressive, Armando Iannucci's political satire will none the less go down as one of the best ever British comedies: sharp and cynical. Tonight, after last Saturday's excellent Leveson and Chilcot-inspired special, it finally bows out, with an instalment overflowing with delicious duplicity and inventive insults - not least from Malcom Tucker (the ever-wonderful Peter Capaldi) who gives Ollie Reader (Chris Addison) a hilarious dressing down.

The episode picks up with the Home Office having cut police numbers, which in turn has created a huge backlog of arrest paperwork. Cleverly, however, they've managed to shift the blame onto the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship for the burgeoning queues at police stations. "I doubt there are any major criminals on the loose," says Phil Smith (Will Smith). "This is about paperwork; it's not Con Air." Elsewhere, Dan Miller (Tony Gardner), at Malcolm's suggestion, is sent on a fact-finding mission to a police station in an attempt to make the Government look unresponsive. To say any more about the plot would give too much away, but viewers can expect a climax that is as poignant as it is amusing.

Iannucci accidentally leaked Thick Of It episode

Armando Iannucci has admitted on Twitter that he accidentally linked his followers to a full episode of The Thick of It.

Spectacular and embarrassing U-turn time. At the start of this series of The Thick of It (BBC2, Saturday) I said it had lost its way, and wondered if Armando Iannucci had, what with all his other projects such as conquering America, taken his eye off it. To be fair to me, that first episode was weak.

Since then it has been patchy, with highs and ... not exactly lows, but kind of so-so middle grounds. Nearly all the highs have come when the opposition (Tucker, Murray, Reeder etc) has been under the spotlight.

This one, an hour-long Hutton/Leveson-type inquiry into Mr Tickel's death and practices in politics, all set in one room, is something different. Not just sparkling, but also tense and claustrophobic. I even felt a bit moved, seeing Malcolm Tucker on the ropes for the first time, a fallen despot. And it's so very real - it basically is Leveson, just with characters from TTOI in it. Satire at its very very best, a brilliant piece of television.

Armando Iannucci and his A-Team of writers serve up a surprise this week: a one-off, gift-set edition that's a different beast altogether from what we're used to. In place of the usual sweary farce, we get dry satire, set entirely at hearings for a public inquiry into the death of Douglas Tickell, the health worker whose suicide has dogged DoSAC ministers and flunkies throughout the series.

The exchanges are skilfully done, mocking the etiquette of Leveson-type inquiries, where a quaint legalistic process ("If you would turn to tab 16...") tries to fathom the mad scramble of ministerial politics.

To start with, you may miss the mad scramble and its belly-laughs a bit, but this has great moments. There's Peter Mannion struggling to appear politically correct, Stuart Pearson talking guff ("I believe in government as a transceiver, yeah?") and Malcolm, still cobra-deadly without his usual profanities, and all the more dangerous when he seems to be cornered.

But it's fragile aide Robyn who returns to deliver the damning verdict on her political masters: "To be honest, I think they're just trying to get through the day without cocking up."

No rehearsal for Thick Of It cast

Producer Adam Tandy said that they filmed the BBC Two episode - directed by the show's creator Armando Iannucci - in a way which would make the inquiry, examining government leaks, as realistic as possible.

He said: "We gave our regular cast no rehearsal at all, and simply pushed them on to set with the cameras already running, and then our Clerk swore them in."

After a measured start, Armando Iannucci's political farce has really begun to throw its characters into a whirlwind of events, which this week come faster than a DVD of The West Wing locked on x32 speed. Having ousted Nicola Murray in a clinical putsch, a now resurgent Malcolm Tucker relishes a new leadership that can 'stick the boot into those coked-up, cousin-fucking chinless aliens'. The heir presumptive is Dan Miller, once presented as a youthful and polished Blairite (perhaps modelled on David Miliband). His coronation is side-tracked by a series of events that has the entire cast in all its various factions (including the ludicrously dude-ish minor coalition partners) working together in perfect chaos. Meanwhile, Peter Mannion's temper is boiling over; with a couple of members of the public in his office tonight, you feel like the word 'pleb' could burst out of him at any moment.

"No smiling. Not even a wee Anne Robinson. The look we're going for should be solemn respect. Like blokes modelling underpants," scolds Malcom Tucker (Peter Capaldi) to his team in this fifth episode of Armando Iannucci's political comedy series, back after a one-week hiatus. Tonight, Nicola Murray (Rebecca Front) and Peter Mannion (Roger Allam) are both on the back foot after the unravelling of the key-worker housing sell-off policy.

Peter Mannion: I hate conference.

What do politicians really think of their annual shindigs? This leaked memo from Coalition minister Peter Mannion to a long-standing Tory friend reveals all...

It does sometimes seem like just one-long exchange of well-crafted insults, but Armando Iannucci's comedy of political (bad) manners is one of the most purely enjoyable things on television. This week a reluctant Peter Mannion (Roger Allam) has been dragooned into a "thought camp" in a rural hotel with no mobile signal. And then the proverbial hits the fan.