Political scheming gets The Office treatment in British comedy In the Loop
On the one hand, In the Loop is essentially a spiritual sequel to the BBC’s acidly satiric The Thick of It. Created by Armando Iannucci (who co-writes In the Loop), both are drawn from the world of British politics and find an absurd but plausible farce that wields language like a high-powered automatic weapon: rapid-fire, deadly and often inaccurate. But where The Thick of It does for government bureaucracy what The Office did for workday banality, In the Loop adds a tragic arc that heightens the comedy and spears the buffoonery of government communication on a single, essential point — even if nothing is said, the wheels still turn.
With most of the original cast from the TV show appearing in the film, In the Loop begins as MP Jamie MacDonald (Paul Higgins) says that war with a never-specified enemy is “unforeseeable.” According to Malcolm (Peter Capaldi), the government’s venomous communications director, war is “neither foreseeable nor foreseeable,” and the off-message gaff is inexcusable. This leads to a trip to Washington to meet with a U.S. senator (Mimi Kennedy) who is trying to stop the progress of a secret war committee, and soon Jamie’s motley communications crew is trying to repair damage on both sides of the Atlantic.
At first, In the Loop draws its strength from the same comic vein as The Thick of It — a blundering MP says patently stupid things; attempts to fix previous mistakes lead to fresh ones and Malcolm screams horrifying obscenities and/or death threats. But this time there’s a new dimension: Not every mistake is a stupid one, and sometimes even the right choice can’t trump the wrong one. Instead, everyone determined to manipulate the system through carefully crafted messages is actually trapped by that same system.
Even the arch-spin demon Malcolm, painted in deadly sharp strokes by Capaldi, is eventually out-manoeuvered because, like every other politician and civil servant he managed to threaten into submission, he’s ultimately a servant. The true believers are as ready to flatten their ideological opponents as Malcolm is to wield the party whip and the result is a poignant reminder that, at the core of all this talking, these attacks will inevitably produce painfully tangible results.
Blisteringly funny, In the Loop doesn’t lose any of the wit or absurdity that makes The Thick of It such fine, fun political satire. If the results have to be tragic anyway, why not have a laugh on the way down?
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