by Eilidh Clark

Created on: September 12, 2009

In The Loop was released earlier in 2009 as a spin off movie from the TV show The Thick Of It. Directed by Armando Ianucci and starring Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander and Gina McKee among others, it follows the rather hapless Minister for International Development Simon Foster.

Foster (Hollander) makes an inadvertent comment about war being unforeseeable, when the US President and UK Prime Minister are rather fancying a war. To get out of this comment, he inadvertently backs war and finds himself being sent to Washington on a "fact-finding" mission.

The story was not the backbone of this film for me, but rather the characters and political machinations. I've never watched The Thick Of It, but assume this is just like a longer episode of the TV show. The characters are all wonderfully written and acted, and stereotypical. Foster and his team, Toby (Chris Addison) and Judy (McKee), are all very English and slightly bumbling. The Americans see backstabbing, secrecy and betrayal at every turn. And the Scots...well, despite being Scottish I don't think I would be alone in saying that the Scots steal the show.

Peter Capaldi is the chief spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker, and spends his days swearing imaginatively and shouting at people, usually Foster and co. For me he simply didn't have enough screen time - Foster is the main character in terms of the story, but the film is all about Tucker and what he's going to say next and where he's going to appear from to ruin Foster's day. There are numerous shots of him running like a madman trying to catch up with Foster and stop his latest gaff. The film is full of memorable lines from him, but I honestly can't think of one that I could repeat here, they are all very strong swearing!

The other Scot in the film is Tucker's deputy, who he leaves to clear up a mess in London while he goes to Washington. Jamie MacDonald is played by the excellent Paul Higgins, who I enjoyed in the recent BBC drama Hope Springs, but who I can now see was not working at his full potential. The character of MacDonald is introduced by Tucker as "the angriest man in Scotland", and he's not kidding. Tucker seems to have moulded MacDonald in his own image, so the language is just as strong, but MacDonald is even angrier about everything. He breaks a fax machine for fun. Again, I'd love to give you some of his memorable lines but they can't be repeated here.

These two characters don't have a lot of screen time together although they do talk by phone for a

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