A little too thick and not enough depth

Naturally, beloved readers, you will have been far too self-consciously intelligent to even learn a couple of names of X-factor contestants over the past few months, for fear that an ill-timed Freudian slip of 'Jedward' might slip out when you are furiously engaged in a debate over the extent to which Less Economically Developed Countries should influence talks at the Copenhagen summit. Picture it now, as you passionately beaver away in discourse regarding rising sea-levels and the immediate dangers posed to the 125 million Bangladeshis residing in the Ganges Delta, before suddenly two Something About Mary-quiffed Irishmen rear their unfathomably triangular heads in between the lines of stilted houses and submerged paddy fields that constitute the visual force of your argument.

Of course, the one thing worse than being seen to watch reality television, is to imply snobbishly that you don't watch television at all, berating it as a prime example of Adorno and Horkheimer's Culture Industry, while pursuing a one-man-battle against becoming a fetishized commodity. This wouldn't do at all - at least not publicly - such an attitude would diminish any intellectual aura coupled with down-to-earth approachability: the gold standard of us all...

Of course the shrewd social entrepreneurs among you will recognize a glaring gap in the market here: television which is simultaneously popular but which somehow reaffirms one's own sense of intellectual superiority. Such shows typically come along once in a generation: Chris Morris did his best at exploiting this niche in the mid '90s, while other notable attempts include Larry David's wonderful Curb Your Enthusiasm (which, it must be said, is justly popular in the States) and Stewart Lee's recent 'Comedy Vehicle', which had the dual benefit of showing the public just how brilliant Stewart Lee actually is, while simultaneously alienating any Top Gear fans (see his inspired rant about Richard Hammond's car accident) who might have bizarrely stumbled across an episode while high on the intoxicating fumes of radiator oil and rampant misogyny.

Overall though, there is one reigning king of the smart-arse-yet-popular-sacrilidge to-voice-disapproval-of genre of comedy, Armando Ianucci's 'The Thick of It'. To criticise The Thick of It is a bit like agreeing with Sarah Palin's view on Global Warming or buying a caravan: You immediately lose all your existing friends, and find them replaced with people who you really don't want to be hanging around with, and I will say now that I have no intention of doing such a thing. It is easily one of the funniest things on television since the turn of the Millenium, it achieves the rare feat of being genuinely topical (an election was called in the final episode of the most recent series, and barely a week later a General Election in March is being mooted), and even the spin-off Hollywood cross-over film was inspired. In fact it is exactly these merits which make it such a dangerous proposition.

The real core of this trouble is its ubiquitous anti-hero Malcom Tucker, an inspired role played by Peter Capaldi that has managed to single-handedly restore any old stereotypes of Glaswegians which may have been laid dormant through Billy Connolly, rebranding and endless talk of cultural legacies, while providing a beautiful satire of Alastair Campbell which even the man himself could not contrive. Tucker dominates each episode (and the film In the Loop). He is the the one stable presence of inspired "fuck"-based invective around which everyone else - hapless Cabinet Ministers, egocentric junior advisors, clueless civil servants - circulates. Even the handful of scenes involving 'The Opposition' are dominated by the Spectre of Tucker, threatening to rip out particular bodily organs and perform higly dubious sexual acts on their previous owners with them.

The thing about this (and it makes for great viewing), is that Tucker becomes less of an anti-hero - someone who is morally dubious, but captivating in the process: think Milton's Satan, Bronte's Heathcliff or Living TV's Jade Goody - and more of a superhero. A caped fucking crusader cleaning up all the mess left behind by a bunch of inept elected officials who are continually doing their best to lose the next election, whenever it may be. We come quickly to admire the guy: he's witty, he's clever, he's knowledgable and he's powerful. When he got sacked in the penultimate episode of the recent series, I came close to cyring the sort of sit-com tears reserved solely for the final scene of Blackadder goes forth. In the Loop is so astounding as it makes us actively root for Tucker as he manipulates evidence to sanction an otherwise illegal war. We want him to succeed, and come the end there is this bizarre feeling of euphoria as war is declared and Tucker stands triumphant.

Of course, maybe this is the point. Like the best satire, it treads the knife-edge of sympathy and cynicism: we have to keep checking ourselves, re-evaluating our allegiances, questioning good and bad in the murky and labyrinthine worlds of politics and beauracracy. The problem is, The Thick of It is just too watchable for that - it takes the universal truth that politicians are idiots and that spin-doctors are the real masterminds, and simply runs with it. This makes for hilarious, compelling viewing, but it always seems a little too far from the truth for it to really hit home.

Alastair Campbell - the Tucker prototype himself - perhaps puts it best in this interview where he is subjected to In the Loop. Despite the absolute joy in watching his discomfort at harpoons of satire aimed pretty much squarely at his slimy fins, and the even greater joy as he tries to justify which bits he found funniest (essentially the only unfunny bits in the whole movie), you can't help but feel - as much as you may loathe yourself for it - that Campbell has a point when he says "What there isn't in any of those characters is a kind of belief system... most people who go into it [politics] they kind of believe something". We love Tucker, because in the land of the Wankers, the biggest, most articulate Wanker is king. But he is still a wanker. The Thick of It just needs that little bit of a heart - even (perhaps especially) if it is roundly ripped out and shat upon - then we will have a truly brutal satire on our hands. And more importantly, it should still be intellectually approachable enough for any right thinking folk to think that the X factor is merely a solution on an A level maths paper...