Malcolm Tucker, he stole the show…and got a movie.

This article will contain spoilers

It started with a show.

In case you’re not familiar with the British comedy series The Thick of It, I’ll get you in the loop (you’ll see what I did there). It´s a satire with a very dark humour about the ins and outs of a department in the British government and how the whole political ecosystem works: the advisers, civil servants, ministers, the media and spin doctors.

Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi, is officially the director of communications for the governing party, but he is so much more than that, during his very first scene he is labeled as “the Prime Minister’s enforcer”, he is the master of every dark art necessary to push people into doing his bidding (or the party’s), his incendiary tongue and psychotic eyes leave no soul unshaken, in certain scenarios he can be the most powerful person in British politics and definitely the most influential person in the room.

With that description you’d think that he is set for the leading role of the series and if you go by promotional material, DVD covers and fan edits of the show on YouTube, it seems like a safe bet to state that. Then Malcolm would burst into the room, offer to perform exploratory surgery without anesthesia to check if your mouth is in fact connected to your brain and hope that you had put up your house for collateral on such a stupid bet. Cause it didn't started that way.

For starters, he is not receiving leading man screen time throughout the show:

• Season one, 38% of screen time.
• Season two, 36%.
• Special episodes, 50.5%.
• Season three, 44%.
• Season four, 27%.

As you can see, Malcolm’s time on the spotlight is a little bit like a roller coaster. Even when he is there, he’s not always 100% there. Maybe he’s moved out of earshot to deal with official matters or he is just waiting, lurking around like a paler Dracula until he chooses the best offering for his Scottish fangs. Scenes in that second vein are always a highlight.

The main reason why he can be absent for so much time is cause the plotlines rarely revolve around him, during the first two seasons he intervenes in the story only to straighten the party lines or when the mishandling of certain issues by the staff has turned a snowball into an avalanche, therefore Malcolm has to nuke the mountain. We were suppossed to follow the lifes of the staff inside the Department of Social Affairs, the issue was that it didn't matter if they were driving the car, the wheel moved exclusively when Malcol screamed at it. When they shot two special episodes, the creative team had little choice but to write a story with Malcolm leading the lines. His persona had actually highjacked the show. Season three rolled around and his involvment was pushed down somewhat, returning the action to the ministry, although we had some scenes solely focused on Malcolm. By the fourth season his party has lost power and they were no longer roaming the halls of 10 Downing Street (the equivalent of The White House in British politics), entire episodes go Malcolm-less, as the focus splits to characters of the new party in charge of the Union.

So, why is Malcolm the lasting image of a show that’s not really about him? To put it bluntly, he’s a level above every other character in the show. The writing style, heavily constructed of jabs, banter and one liners, gives everyone a chance to shine but only Malcolm constantly goes supernova. The screen is charge with electricity when he’s on. Other characters build his aura when he’s not around, considering him as some sort of boogeyman, a political terminator, someone you want to avoid in face-to-face confrontations. In those instances, the filming style of handheld camera starts losing The Office vibes and instead becomes The Blair Witch Project.

The writers of the show seemed to love writing for Malcolm too. So much so that they created a recurring character in season two, Jamie, who is basically a Malcolm Tucker clone, another foul mouthed, rage filled, media adviser Scotsman with an even thicker accent this time around.

Yet, after all the hate, fear and despise the characters show towards Malcolm; to the point where they celebrate as if they had just won the World Cup when Malcolm is apparently being kicked out of the political field. There´s still a lot of respect for him, after all, he is the media puppet master that every politician would want by his side. Everyone is nervous of being on the receiving end of a Tucker rant, an action that coined a verb in the show: “getting tuckered”. However, you love to see those Night King eyes pointing at your worst enemy, knowing very well that there´s a barrage of F-bombs coming his way and Malcolm can vanish his career aspirations with the flick of a finger.

Still, being an active volcano in the form a human being is not the only reason why Malcolm Tucker stole the show. The thing is, Malcolm is also the most humane character (yes, I wrote it and I stand by it). He is one of the few who shows empathy, proper manners and is courteous to people outside of the political spectrum, especially the working class, while the rest of the characters often act like snobs and treat citizens in a condescending way. On 99.9% of the time he’ll let his rage scourge the earth, no matter who’s getting burned and he won’t look back after doing it; all is fair in love, war and politics, but there’s that .1% where he’ll recognize that he went too far or immediately own up to a mistake in a sincere and heartfelt way. Something even more rare in other characters.

His long-term vision is unrivaled, he himself admits that he lacks the education of others in the show and somehow, he can outmaneuver them to always fall safely and soundly employed for the past two decades. A lot of it is due to the credit that comes with his unwavering loyalty to the party, regardless if they are governing or part of the opposition. When others are looking for their cheap ticket upwards in the food chain, Malcolm stays to true to what he knows it works, he shares that knowledge, it may be sprayed with gasoline and he’s holding a blow torch, still, it´s being shared. Most of the actions of the rest of the cast tend to be for selfish reasons, Malcolm never let’s the greater goal out of his sight. Some people are going to be pushed out of the way, usually people with an expiration date stamped on their forehead, either they have reached the tolerance limit for incompetence or is the most honorable step they can take in their careers at that point, they just don’t know it yet. Malcolm has seen what it takes to live in the world of politics, he has alarms installed in his body that go off whenever a stumbling block or dead weight is going to drag the party with them. He prefers you call him English than let that happen.

And then he got a movie.

By 2008, after the success of the first two seasons and the special episodes, talks began about producing a spin-off of the Thick of It for the big screen. The two specials, which are a little shy of two hours in runtime, were almost a trial run to see how a longer and heavier on the Malcolm content would play.

Imagine making a movie of The Office, but Jim and Creed are the only ones in it, Steve Carrel is part of the cast, playing somebody else instead of Michael. The team of writers and the series’ creator came up with a story that would see the American and British government secretly working together in the lead up to the Iraq War. New characters were created to fill the American side, Thick of It regulars were given new roles to fit with the international storyline, only two characters were brought over from the TV world completely untouched, Malcolm and Jamie.

In April 2009, In the Loop (now you’ve seen what I did) was released in theaters. Malcolm shows up from the very first scene, his tongue as sharp as ever, some would say sharper, due to the fact that he has to compete with characters who are given a bigger bite in their lines, maybe a consequence of writing for Americans or simply losing some TV shackles. His presence is sporadical in about two thirds of the movie. Then, when the climatic scenes start coming together, the camera hardly cuts away from him, he stands up against the new alpha males in the cast, people he can’t intimidate with their job security, sometimes, his antagonist has actually more power than him (his exchange with Gandolfini is excellent). For a second he may look beaten or shook, nevertheless he endures, making clear that his fiery personality is not a façade put on to scare the flaky Englishman he has to deal with across the pond. We are seeing the real Malcolm all the time.

And… he kind of inspired another show.

While The Tick of It was still going, ABC approached Armando Iannucci, the series creator, for an American adaptation of the show. Iannucci ended up only having a producer credit and no other creative involvement in the pilot. The American version incredibly took away all the profanity and improvisation in the show, Iannucci couldn’t offer his full blessing to that bastardized version and thankfully, it didn’t get picked up for a full season.

Years later, as The Tick of It was coming to an end, HBO started negotiations with Iannucci for a new attempt at adapting the show for American audiences. That adaptation became VEEP, you can obviously see traces of the British production in the Julia Louis-Dreyfus led comedy, as several writers of The Thick of It worked on the new show for at least four seasons. What you can also see is the “Malcolmification” of the dialogue, the majority of the main cast has a freedom in their speech that only Tucker had. Yes, the British could deliver a devastating one liner, but in America everyone has access to the F-bombs and flowing rage.

Now I couldn’t leave you without sharing some of the best quotes from the fictional character that I’ve been building up all this time.

• “I wouldn’t f***ing piss on you, if you were f***ing allergic to piss, right?”
• “You got on the record and off the record f**ing mixed up! What would have happened if like George Martin would have done that? They wouldn’t be no f**ing Beatles, that’s what.”
• “I’d love to stop and chat but I’d rather have type 2 diabetes.”
• - “We are the Gallagher brothers of politics”. - “How does that work? Does that mean that I’m semi-talented songwriter and you’re the f***ing lotish prick? That’s a lovely analogy”.

Suggestion: Turn on subtitles.