Veep

I have only recently discovered veep which upsets me slightly, as it is one of the funniest shows I have come across in a while.

It revolves around the Vice President of the United States or Selina Meyer, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and she plays the part of the blame pushing, nasty politician well but does show levels of humanity and empathy at times, to remind you she is still a human being.

The has a small work force consisting of Gary Walsh the bag man played by Tony Hale, most well known for his part as Buster in Arrested Development. He plays the same wet blanket type character, he takes his job far too seriously and clearly has romantic feelings for the veep. He is an excellent character in this though.

  
She also has Amy Brookheimer as her chief of staff played by Anna Chlumsky who has clearly sacrificed her entire social life for her job, which the majority of the time the team just fuck up anyway. Her family and colleagues constantly remind her of how single she is etc which just leads to embarrassing dating situations to try and compensate. She works closely with the deputy director of communications; Dan Egan, played by Reid Scott. Dan is willing to do about anything to further his career and often makes a tit of himself in trying too hard to do so. Dan is deputy to Mike McLintock who is the director of communications, played by Matt Walsh. Mike is utterly useless, he often creates horrible situations within the administration and says the most inappropriate things at the worst times, he is one of the best characters in the series by far.
The veep has a personal assistant called Sue Wilson, played by Sufe Bradshaw. She is very blunt and emotionless most of the time, she comes out with some excellent, cutting one liners.

Between the majority of the staff at the administration various critical errors are consitently made, and the humour comes with them reacting to that. By finding anyway to push the blame on to someone else or by creating another event or policy to cover up the massive fuck up. Very much what I imagine goes on in the world of government.
My initial though when watching veep was that it reminded me slightly on the film in the loop, which was loosely based on the thick of it, which Iannucci also worked on. it was very much the same kind of attitude within American government even with some reaccuring characters, whilst I enjoyed in the loop it has nothing on Veep.

 Season 4 of veep is currently concluding, whilst there have been some stand out episodes such as “Helsinki” and “Clovis” the most recent episode “Testimony” was possibly my favourite episode of all time. Without giving too much away, it is very similar to the inquiry episodes of the thick of it. It shows the level of incompetence, blame pushing and scapegoating that goes on in politics but in a hilarious way. 

The show is created by Armando Iannucci, the legend behind the likes of the I’m Alan partridge and Brass Eye with Chris Morris even directing some of the episodes. So there is the same dark British humour underneath that American front, so give it a few episodes before judging. I have linked the episodes mention if anyone wants to check them out.

  
Any opinions on this show? Please leave a comment