TV Critics: The Thick of It; You've Been Trumped; Homeland

“It was a daring departure from form and it turned into something more fiercely accusatory than you might have expected… Curiously, the restrictions of the set-up pushed the cast into some of their best performances for weeks, not doing a familiar schtick any longer but suddenly off balance and under an entirely novel kind of pressure. It was both very funny and also the closest thing we’ve had to serious political drama on television for far too long.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“At the start of this series of The Thick of It, 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… Since then it has been patchy, with highs and … not exactly lows, but kind of so-so middle grounds… 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… Satire at its very very best, a brilliant piece of television.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“On what, although there is one to go, felt like the last ever The Thick Of It, its dramatis personae died and faced Judgment Day. Their deaths were only career deaths and their judge was Lord Goolding not God, but with what agony did their words consign them to the flame! Its point, like the last Seinfeld where Jerry and his clique were jailed for ‘doing nothing’, was to remind us that for all the laughs they have given us we had been watching the antics of the damned.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“[It] was so biased in favour of the protesters that it was hard not to end up rooting for Trump and his monolithic capitalist plans.”
Neil Midgley, The Telegraph

“An extraordinary film. Engrossing, brave, and because so many people come out of it dripping in shame, shocking and depressing too.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“The tale of Trump versus the villagers has been told on TV countless times, which is exactly why it needed to be told in a different way now. Where were the locals who had backed the development? Were they still backing it as it took its horrible shape or had they changed their minds? Was there not one decent, cogent, fair-minded person in local government or Trump’s empire who could have put forward a case for the other side? If you’re asking me to be shocked by alleged examples of injustice, of governments bowing to big business or the police supposedly acting like bullies, forget it.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“This week, the mystery was why Abu Nazir would insist on Brody jeopardising his cover by sending him to rescue the group’s bomb-maker, whose cover had been blown… From that point things got worse with comical rapidity until Brody’s day ended with him hosing blood and mud off himself in a public car wash. I’m beginning to wonder whether this plot was devised at one of the real-world locations glimpsed in last night’s episode – the George Bush Center for Intelligence.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Last night, in a little breakthrough, an American primetime hero was seen with an erection in his trousers – merely one of the indignities Brody would suffer in another attention-devouring episode.”
Andrew Billen, The Times