05/25/2006 09:16:00 PM 
The show is centers on the Department for Social Affairs and the activities of the Minister that runs it.
While the West Wing painted something of an old-fashioned image of politicians trying to do the right thing, often against adversity, The Thick of It is strikingly realistic, showing politicians serving one master, not the electorate, but the media. They spend their lives second guessing the media, hoping for headlines and testing policy in focus groups. It's really about how message has become the dominant force in politics. The writing is incisive and its production style sucks the viewer into the political rollercoaster.
Series creator Armando Ianucci researched the show by having lunches and this being British politics, teas with former politicians and civil servants, where he discovered what politics is all about now.
"Ministers have very little power. They are financially and politically restrained by a centralized bunch of twenty-something policy-wonks and adminolescents at Number Ten. These people are abetted by a gang of political bouncers or 'enforcers' from the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit, who tell each Ministry what it's to do, how it's to do it, who's to get the credit for doing it if it goes well, and how to take the flack if it goes badly. The members of the Delivery Unit occasionally call in on the Ministries to make sure everyone's on message. Cabinet Ministers also have no power in that they are petrified into inactivity through fear of the media, especially The Sun and The Daily Mail."
In the documentary on science fiction writer William Gibson, "No Maps for the Territories", the author tells the story of another writer sending him a note with the news that Michael Jackson had married Lisa-Marie Presley. "This makes your work harder," read the note.
It's the fact that today's political reality is often funnier than imagined fiction that makes this show work so well.
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