The Thick of It

On the data. THE TOTAL IS TWENTY-ONE, OR TWENTY-THREE IF YOU COUNT THE 2007 SPECIALS AS EPISODES. Both figures are defensible and both are published. The four numbered series are three, three, eight and seven, which is twenty-one, and that is the figure this page counts because the two specials have rows of their own. The British Comedy Guide says twenty-three episodes across four series, and TheTVDB's DVD ordering reaches the same twenty-three by folding the specials into series two. Same television either way. THE TWO 2007 SPECIALS ARE FILED FOUR DIFFERENT WAYS, and all four are in live use. Wikipedia, the British Comedy Guide and epguides give them their own 2007 Specials block outside the series numbering. TVmaze attaches both to season two with no episode number. TheTVDB's official ordering puts them in season zero as S00E14 and S00E15, at the END of a season zero list that is not in date order. TheTVDB's DVD ordering makes them series two episodes four and five, unmarked as specials. Every scheme agrees on the broadcast chronology, so this page uses chronology: series two, then the specials, then series three. IN THE LOOP IS NOT CONFIRMED AS THE SAME CONTINUITY, and that is stated rather than guessed. Two characters really do carry over, Malcolm Tucker and Jamie McDonald, with the same actors. Five more series actors appear as different people. Wikipedia calls it a spin-off and pointedly does not call it a sequel or a prequel. The closest thing to a creator's ruling is Armando Iannucci on NPR in 2009 calling it an offshoot of the television show, which settles nothing. One reading in circulation is that the film retells the real chain of events that gave Iannucci the idea for the series in the first place, which would put it outside the series rather than inside it. Watchable last either way. VEEP IS NOT A CROSSOVER AND NOT A CONTINUATION. Armando Iannucci created both, Simon Blackwell wrote on The Thick of It and co-wrote the Veep pilot, and actors move between them: Anna Chlumsky, Zach Woods and Mimi Kennedy all came out of In the Loop into Veep in similar but different roles, and Rhea Seehorn and Michael McKean were in the unaired American pilot before guesting in Veep's last season. Not one character continues between the two. Malcolm Tucker is not in Veep in any episode. A shared creator and a recycled cast is not a shared story, and Veep is not in the order above. AN AMERICAN PILOT WAS MADE AND NEVER BROADCAST. ABC ordered it for 2007, Christopher Guest directed, Mitch Hurwitz and Richard Day were involved in the writing depending which source you believe, and Oliver Platt played a recast Malcolm Tucker opposite John Michael Higgins, Alex Borstein, Michael McKean and Rhea Seehorn. ABC passed on it. It has never aired, so it is not a row here, though the full pilot was put on YouTube in November 2023 and can be watched. Iannucci has disowned it in public, saying they took the idea and threw out the style. EIGHT COMPANION PIECES WENT OUT WITH SERIES THREE AND ARE NOT ROWS HERE. One followed each series three episode between 26 October and 14 December 2009, on the red button and the BBC's comedy site, around ten minutes each, mixing cut and specially written scenes with the writers and real politicians talking. Both that there were eight and the dates are two-sourced. The name they usually go under, Out of the Thick of It, comes from TheTVDB alone, their length is ten minutes by Wikipedia and an obviously defaulted thirty by TheTVDB, and Wikipedia calls them webisodes in one sentence and insists they are not in another. Half documentary is not what this site counts, and a row with a single-sourced title and a disputed length is worse than a paragraph, so they are a paragraph. NO CHARITY SKETCH AND NO UNAIRED BRITISH PILOT. Searched for specifically. Wikipedia, the British Comedy Guide, TVmaze and TheTVDB all have no entry for a Comic Relief or Children in Need piece, and none has any record of a pilot before series one. Three databases having nothing is not proof of nothing, so this is written as no entry rather than as zero. THE MALCOLM TUCKER MATERIAL THAT IS NOT TELEVISION, for completeness and not as rows: a weekly Guardian column by Jesse Armstrong before the 2010 election, one Ian Martin column as Stewart Pearson, a 2010 iPhone app, a GQ cover and recorded Christmas message in December 2012, a 2017 emailed Brexit argument with Alan Partridge in The Big Issue, and two script books. Peter Capaldi also answered a question in character on Australian television in April 2018, which is a chat show ad-lib and not a produced sketch.

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