Trivia / The Thick of It

• Actor-Shared Background: In a Deleted Scene from "The Rise of the Nutters", Malcolm tells Ben Swain that Jamie trained as a priest, much like his actor, Paul Higgins.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Malcolm's first insult in the whole show is "He's as useless as a marzipan dildo", not "He's about as much use as a marzipan dildo".
• …But I Play One on TV:
  • Rebecca Front is baffled at how playing a fictional minister has brought her a flood of requests to appear on news shows as a political pundit. Similarly, Peter Capaldi was asked to interview Alastair Campbell in the style of Malcolm Tucker but had to refuse on the grounds that Malcolm is a fictional character and that he'd need backup from eight writers.
  • Peter Capaldi gets fans stopping him the street with requests to tell them to fuck off: "...and sometimes I mean it".
• Career Resurrection: Peter Capaldi had grown disillusioned with acting and the bland roles he was taking just for the money. He was considering quitting acting altogether when he was cast as Malcolm Tucker the role gave him the opportunity to stretch and rediscover his love of acting while the increased attention got him even bigger roles, such as Doctor Who.
• The Catchphrase Catches On: Malcolm Tucker coined the word "Omnishambles" which ended up being used by real politicians before eventually entering the Oxford English Dictionary. This baffles the writers to no end.
• Channel Hop: Aired on BBC Four before moving to the more mainstream BBC Two for its fourth and final season.
• Corpsing: Miles Jupp revealed on the commentary for Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle that he had terrible problems bursting into laughter during his first scene, so the writers included that in John Duggan's later appearance on the train.
• The Danza:
  • Phil Smith is played by Will Smith.
  • Sam Cassidy, played by Samantha Harrington.
• Deleted Scene: Several of 'em, season one, season two, the specials, season three and season four.
• Directed By Castmember: Although Armando Iannucci directed the first three series, the final series featured a number of guest directors including Chris Addison (who plays Ollie Reader). His episode was notable for the fact that his character spent most of the episode alone in a hospital bed.
• Disowned Adaptation: Armando Iannucci disowned the American pilot:
  It was terrible...they took the idea and chucked out all the style. It was all conventionally shot and there was no improvisation or swearing. It didn't get picked up, thank God.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • A lot of the irritability and stress the characters appear to be experiencing is genuine. Armando Iannucci was always rewriting scripts and would often hand them pages of dense dialogue they'd have to nail so as not to drag out production.
  • For the enquiry episode, the cast were given no rehearsal or preparation before filming. Furthermore, there were no opportunities for the actors to talk to one another between re-shoots, and were kept separate from the "witnesses", like an actual enquiry.
• Genre-Killer: The series is seen as one of a "holy trinity" of 1990s and 2000s comedy shows — the others being The Office (UK) and Extras — that discredited the classic Brit Com format and lead to the Dramedy being adopted as the standard format for British comedy shows.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Each scene was filmed twice, once as scripted followed by an improvised version. The finished programme used material from both takes.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Old-school Tory MP Peter Mannion was played by left-leaning Roger Allam.^note Still, a relatively mild exmaple compared to the full-on fascist he plays in V for Vendetta
• Life Imitates Art: Scarily often in UK politics, as politicians began quoting lines from the show, referred to it in Parliament, and began acting like the characters. Seeing this led Armando Iannucci to realize the project had run its course.
• Playing Against Type: Up to that point in his career, Peter Capaldi mostly played mild-mannered supporting roles. Playing Malcolm Tucker shattered industry perceptions of him.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanour: In 2005, Chris Langham was charged with downloading child pornography. Rather than make a full second series without him, the producers made two hour-long specials for which they put him on a bus, leaving the door open for him to return if he was found not guilty. He was found guilty at his 2007 trial and served 15 weeks in prison, and his character Hugh Abbott disappeared from the show never to return.
• Sleeper Hit: The series was given a limited budget and aired on the niche BBC Four channel, but it became a cult hit that turned Peter Capaldi into a star. Season 4 ended up getting a Channel Hop to BBC Two as a result.
• Star-Making Role: Peter Capaldi was considering leaving acting altogether before this show turned him into a major star.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Armando Iannucci was constantly rewriting scripts as he took ad-libs and the overall mood on set into account. He'd even throw out finished scripts and hand actors brand-new pages in the middle of shooting, forcing them to learn lines on the fly.

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