Veep

[Baron Kurtz]

Has Veep started on HBO yet? There's a puff-piece about it in The Observer today.

Armando Iannucci is certainly the greatest comic mind in British TV today, and so I have high hopes of what he can do with the inherently ridiculous (in terms of its manifest absurdity) role of Vice President.

I'd love to hear US FLounger's opinions.

bk

 

[skyvue]

It debuts on Sunday, April 22.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Ah, OK. Hope it's good. The previews look OK; i'm not getting the feeling it'll be as good as The Thick of It, though.

bk

 

[Baron Kurtz]

So, anyone watch Veep?

bk

 

[Feraud]

The wife and I saw the first two episodes. There were a couple of laughs in what should be an environment ripe for humor.
Part of the problem I am experiencing is not liking any of the characters and not caring how they use each other to worm their way through the political system. Perhaps a bit of backstory might help this.
I appreciate a well placed swear word as much as the next guy but the foul language seems very forced.
Tony Hale and Matt Walsh are two redeeming faces in this crowd.
I'll hang in there for another episode or two and see if the show finds it's way.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Yeah, Iannucci tends to have an awful lot of swearin' in his programs. In British politics, and British life in general, tbh, that's realistic and is fully accepted as such on TV - particularly comedy - programs.

Any more ideas about the show after more episodes? from the write-up the first episode has had in The Observer today (below), I suspect that this is very much going to work better in the UK than in the US. I had always thought this would be the case as I can't see Armando Iannucci's stuff working all that well over the pond. Did Thick of It get any TV time over there?

It wasn't just that, very early, we heard the new vice-president's chief of staff, Amy, describe an ambitious aide as a "sh*t", and forgive me for using the word equally early on a Sunday morning, but it might as well be got out of the way and I won't use it again, unlike Amy. It was that the camera so explicitly failed to cut away, instead allowing Amy to expand on her taxonomic thesis, explaining not only every sideways way in which Dan was one, as had been the horse he rode up on, and how he had always been one, and if ever there was a book made of the stuff, with covers melting with the stuff, and pull-out sections mired in the stuff, and every chapter reeking of it and appendices dripping, the book would be called Dan. Rather quickly we realised a) roughly what timbre of chap Dan was, and b) that Armando Iannucci might have been involved with the writing and production of Veep.

Mr I's translocation of The Thick of It to America, specifically the America of the thankless task of being any vice-president, surely the equivalent of a speaking tour as ninth man on the moon, translocates well. The script is predictably sharp, fearless, unforgiving – sometimes so of us the audience; this is something you'll want to watch again, to get nuances – and the aides and liggers and lobbyists and PR flacks as complex and morally mottled as in Westminster. Two crucial differences: there is no Malcolm Tucker character, partly because spin doctors don't yet hold quite the same brutal sway over there, and partly presumably because it would have been just too lazy a move. And the central character, Veep Selina Meyer – Julia Louis-Dreyfus is marvellous, at the centre of every scene yet stealing it anyway – is not quite so much of a numpty as the British ministers. She at least knows when someone's scissoring her finely turned ankles from beneath her. In America it's not her own team, not a Mr Tucker, but the (unseen) president himself, and the insanely powerful vested-interest lobby groups.

The two combined in this opener to force Selina into a speech about oil and plastics, then redact it at the last minute to excise every mention of oil, or plastics. "What's left here?" she shudders, helpless, pinioned by her lack of power. "I have 'hello' and I have… prepositions."

Some characters are already shaping up terrifically. The odiously gauche, lantern-jawed, knowingly named Jonah, liaison to the president and thus ever the bearer of ill luck and bad news: and aforementioned whiz-kid Dan, who was indeed certifiable oomska, but useful oomska. "What can't you manage?" asks Selina admiringly as he gets her off a hook by thrusting it into someone else's mouth. Almost unheard, from an older aide, comes the aside "foreplay. And direct sunlight." The Veep's repeated semi-casual query to her secretary, "Hey Sue, did the president call?", forever greeted with the blunt negative, will become both catchphrase and leitmotif for this next transatlantic winner.

 

[cookie]

Yeah, Iannucci tends to have an awful lot of swearin' in his programs. In British politics, and British life in general, tbh, that's realistic and is fully accepted as such on TV - particularly comedy - programs.

Any more ideas about the show after more episodes? from the write-up the first episode has had in The Observer today (below), I suspect that this is very much going to work better in the UK than in the US. I had always thought this would be the case as I can't see Armando Iannucci's stuff working all that well over the pond. Did Thick of It get any TV time over there?

It wasn't just that, very early, we heard the new vice-president's chief of staff, Amy, describe an ambitious aide as a "sh*t", and forgive me for using the word equally early on a Sunday morning, but it might as well be got out of the way and I won't use it again, unlike Amy. It was that the camera so explicitly failed to cut away, instead allowing Amy to expand on her taxonomic thesis, explaining not only every sideways way in which Dan was one, as had been the horse he rode up on, and how he had always been one, and if ever there was a book made of the stuff, with covers melting with the stuff, and pull-out sections mired in the stuff, and every chapter reeking of it and appendices dripping, the book would be called Dan. Rather quickly we realised a) roughly what timbre of chap Dan was, and b) that Armando Iannucci might have been involved with the writing and production of Veep.

Mr I's translocation of The Thick of It to America, specifically the America of the thankless task of being any vice-president, surely the equivalent of a speaking tour as ninth man on the moon, translocates well. The script is predictably sharp, fearless, unforgiving – sometimes so of us the audience; this is something you'll want to watch again, to get nuances – and the aides and liggers and lobbyists and PR flacks as complex and morally mottled as in Westminster. Two crucial differences: there is no Malcolm Tucker character, partly because spin doctors don't yet hold quite the same brutal sway over there, and partly presumably because it would have been just too lazy a move. And the central character, Veep Selina Meyer – Julia Louis-Dreyfus is marvellous, at the centre of every scene yet stealing it anyway – is not quite so much of a numpty as the British ministers. She at least knows when someone's scissoring her finely turned ankles from beneath her. In America it's not her own team, not a Mr Tucker, but the (unseen) president himself, and the insanely powerful vested-interest lobby groups.

The two combined in this opener to force Selina into a speech about oil and plastics, then redact it at the last minute to excise every mention of oil, or plastics. "What's left here?" she shudders, helpless, pinioned by her lack of power. "I have 'hello' and I have… prepositions."

Some characters are already shaping up terrifically. The odiously gauche, lantern-jawed, knowingly named Jonah, liaison to the president and thus ever the bearer of ill luck and bad news: and aforementioned whiz-kid Dan, who was indeed certifiable oomska, but useful oomska. "What can't you manage?" asks Selina admiringly as he gets her off a hook by thrusting it into someone else's mouth. Almost unheard, from an older aide, comes the aside "foreplay. And direct sunlight." The Veep's repeated semi-casual query to her secretary, "Hey Sue, did the president call?", forever greeted with the blunt negative, will become both catchphrase and leitmotif for this next transatlantic winner.

The missus and I have watched it. Quite sharp. The swearing is probably overdone but overall the dialogue is witty in that sort of wisecrack American way. Maybe there is a little too much of it among the staffers to be real and in that sense it is a comedy.

 

[Feraud]

We've watched the entire season and are back on board. I still find the use of language forced but the VP's continued bumbling through office and desperate need of Presidential approval is growing on me.
I'll be around for season 2.

 

[Feraud]

Bump for an old thread.

As Cookie noted there is a similar pattern of wisecracking among all staffers. It feels like everyone is speaking through one writer's voice. I'd like to see a bit of personality diversity among the cast.

Season three was strong and ended on an unexpected high note for the vice president!