In the Loop

2009, 15, Directed by Armando Iannucci

Starring: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Chris Addison, Gina McKee

Physically and grammatically, the characters of In the Loop are squarely out of it.

What is clear is that they are more caricatures… embodiments of real-life figures (Peter Capaldi’s scathing, profanity-barking Malcolm Tucker being Alastair Campbell). What is unforeseeable is war, according to Tom Hollander’s bumbling minister of international development Simon Foster; and so begins his climb of a mountain of conflict as he accidentally begins a military invasion. His grammatical error causes a war inside the loop people are so desperate to be in, which in itself is an embodiment of the world crisis these hapless politicians are so desperate to avoid. A step-brother of BBC’s The Thick of It, In the Loop is an embodiment of a ticking bomb that rests dangerously close to the bone. Once detonated, resignations are filed, garden walls collapse – and the viewer is more In the Loop than these political plonkers ever will be

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