“It was truly awful from start to finish,” says Armando Iannucci, recalling the painful process around the US remake of his satirical comedy The Thick of It back in 2007. “The pilot was so boring. There was no swearing, no improv … everything The Thick of It had, it didn’t have. I played it for the cast and people just started wandering off. It couldn’t even hold our attention.”
On paper, the US version had looked juicy. Mitch Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development, was producing, with Christoper Guest of Spinal Tap fame directing. But the BBC sold the show to ABC and the culture of US network television – compared with cable or, latterly, streaming, where there’s more freedom around language and content – proved suffocating for Iannucci. “Everything is micromanaged,” he says. “I was a tiny cog in a machine of people all named vice-president of something. I went to one meeting where they were literally discussing the colour ties the cast should be wearing. There were 20 people in the room, including the network president. It was bizarre.”
