In The Loop (DVD)

A review of the Optimum Home Entertainment DVD, which will set you back about £13 at the moment. The only new comedy series that I've really enjoyed over the last few years has been The Thick Of It, a BBC sitcom made by a Scotsman with an Italian name (Armando Ianucci) and starring a Scotsman with an Italian name (Peter Capaldi). It was about a bumbling cabinet minister, and its notional star was Chris Langham. The real star of the show, though, was Capaldi as the nightmarish spin doctor Malcolm Tucker. Langham downloaded some things he really shouldn't have, so the series went on hiatus (there is a new series due, without Langham). But this film ...  Read the complete review

In the Loop is a feature film, created by the team behind the BBC2 political satire 'The Thick of It', directed by Armando Ianucci and starring Peter Capaldi as the inestimable Malcolm Tucker, this is definitely the best British comedy in many years, but then I guess the closest competition has been Kevin and Perry go Large, Alien Autopsy with Ant and Dec or Lesbian Vampire Killers. Its hard to summarise the plot of In the Loop, in essence, a potential war is brewing between the UK, America and a middle eastern country, the British Home Secretary, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) makes an inopportune statement on the radio explaining that in his view the war is ...  Read the complete review

In the eyes of his fans, Armando Iannucci and his ever-evolving band of articulate, sweary and subversive political and social satirists can do little wrong. The BBC series The Thick of It, recently enjoying something of a revival and now on its second series, spawned this sharp-tongued farce about the forces that brought the recent/current war in the Middle East to pass. As with its TV companion, comparisons will be drawn with The Office, with its emphasis on foot-in-mouth humour and deadpan, uncinematic cinematography. It brings with it familiar faces and new villains, all muddling along conspiratorially and with varying degrees of competency. At the centre ...  Read the complete review

***FILM ONLY REVIEW*** In The Loop was released earlier in 2009 as a spin off movie from the TV show The Thick Of It. Directed by Armando Ianucci and starring Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander and Gina McKee among others, it follows the rather hapless Minister for International Development Simon Foster. Foster (Hollander) makes an inadvertent comment about war being unforeseeable, when the US President and UK Prime Minister are rather fancying a war. To get out of this comment, he inadvertently backs war and finds himself being sent to Washington on a "fact-finding" mission. The story was not the backbone of this film for me, but ...  Read the complete review

In The Loop is a reworking of the TV series In The Thick of It, which examined and satirised Anglo-American political relations. Both the series and this film were directed by Armando Iannucci, and when observing the sharp and profanity-laden tongue that this film has, it's no surprise that one of the members of the writing team was Jesse Armstrong, one of the co-creators of the brilliant British comedy Peep Show. In the Loop revolves around a slip of the tongue by Secretary of State for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), who accidentally states that a proposed war in the Middle East is "unforeseeable". He is at first castigated ...  Read the complete review