The Thick of It: Series 3, Episode 5 (2009)

 

In today’s episode, Nicola and Peter go head-to-head in a BBC radio interview.  Both arrive with their advisors in tow, but once they go on the air, there’s not much anyone can do to help or advise.  Just as a general rule, Nicola should never be put in a situation where no one can shut her up.  She has a talent for gabbling on an ordinary day.  Placed in a soundproof room with her political rival and absolutely no ability to interpret her team’s panicked nonverbal communiques on the other side of the glass?  I’d call it a bloodbath, except Peter isn’t Mr. Radio either.

 

Of course, Nicola and Peter’s respective entourages have more to do than just watch the radio train wreck unfolding before them.  Both camps were stuck in close quarters for the duration of the interview, so they also snipe at each other and get into all sorts of kerfuffles on their own.

 

One of Peter’s advisors is Emma Messinger; though she was first mentioned as the “enemy” Ollie was sleeping with in series 2, she didn’t actually appear until the 2007 specials.  She seems to take her job pretty seriously and spends most of her time navigating the conflicts between Peter and Stewart.  She is, however, almost as terrible a girlfriend as Ollie is a boyfriend.  She has a chronic tendency to leak intel to Peter and co., and by this point in the series, she’s definitely more interested in her career than in Ollie.  Nicola and Peter’s interview happens to coincide with a large dollop of relationship drama between Emma and Ollie, which plays out at the radio studio as well.

 

And where’s Malcolm in all this?  He and Stewart are both at their offices, listening to the interviews on the radio and yelling at advisors over the phone to get their people back on track.  By now, you probably know that Glenn and Ollie aren’t exactly capable in a crisis, and Peter’s team isn’t much better, so it’s only a matter of time before the two spin doctors show up at the station to fix things.

 

It’s a lot of fun to watch Malcolm take on Stewart.  Malcolm’s knack for scary intimidation makes Stewart seem feckless, while Stewart’s penchant for soft language makes Malcolm seem unstable.  In the end, they completely abandon Nicola and Peter and zero in on each other.  It’s intense – a knock-down, drag-out battle between two men who’ve worked in politics long enough to have dirt on everyone.  It’s probably a good thing they’re on opposite sides; if they ever joined forces, they’d be unstoppable in a very megalomaniacal way.