The Thick of It: Series 3, Episode 3 (2009)

 

Our favorite politicos are out of their element today – as it’s an election year, the prime minister and some of his people, including Nicola, have traveled to a conference for campaigning and speech-giving.  The DoSAC offices have been swapped for a hotel room with intermittent WiFi, and Nicola’s ace in the hole, the “people’s champion” she’s introducing during her speech, is proving to be more trouble than she’s worth. 

 

Everyone is off their game, none more so than Malcolm.  The clock is counting down to speech time, he’s lost his home-field Number 10 advantage, and it seems nothing is in his control.  Try as he might to contain them, critical pieces of information keep popping up on the blogosphere, and he can’t find the leak. 

 

We see Malcolm here at his most frantic and discombobulated.  In this episode, he commits probably his worst unintentional act.  Naturally, Malcolm is a diabolical man with a thing for power, and his gravest sins are always his most calculated, but this is something different.  It’s maybe a bit similar to the mess he makes of things in “The Rise of the Nutters,” but even there he was plotting, even if his plotting was desperate and haphazard.  Here, it’s literally a spur-of-the-moment screw-up, 100% unplanned and immediately regretted, and it’s interesting to see that from the man who’s constantly scheming. 

 

We also meet John Duggan, the staggeringly incompetent press officer who’s supposed to be ensuring the smooth running of the conference.  It’s a shame John only appears in one more episode in the series, because he’s great fun.  Throughout the course of today’s story, he proves to be ignorant about everything (“the nose can’t break; that’s a myth!” he insists) and unable to help with anything (after spending several days at a hotel where he’s meant to be following media coverage of the conference, he still doesn’t know the WiFi password.) 

 

There’s also an amusing little moment with Nicola and Ollie feverishly trying to finish her speech in the hotel.  As Nicola panics and shouts at him, Ollie attempts to buoy his spirits by comparing himself to a West Wing character.  Nice try, Ollie.