The Thick of It

Veep is Iannucci's own American version of his own British series, made for HBO after In the Loop took the same writers' room to Washington. Everything specific carries across: the handheld single camera, the overlapping dialogue built from long improvised takes then scripted tight, the elaborate insult-writing, and a principal whose office has all the visibility and none of the power. Recorded beside the existing Yes Minister edge rather than instead of it, because they are different claims: one is the genre Veep belongs to, this is the specific programme it is a remake of in all but name.

Armando Iannucci has positioned The Thick of It against Yes Minister explicitly, and the comparison was in every review it got. The form is inherited whole: a minister who is out of his depth, a permanent civil service that outlasts him, and comedy built from procedure rather than from jokes. What changed is who holds the power. In Yes Minister it is Sir Humphrey and the machine; in The Thick of It it is the party's communications enforcer, and the department exists to service the news cycle. The map already records Yes Minister reaching Veep directly; this is the step in between, and it is where the swearing, the handheld camera and the improvisation enter the tradition.