A Video Series Really Worth Seeing (Updated)

In general my policy is: if Andrew Sullivan has mentioned something on his site, there is no need for anyone else to refer to it, since the word has already been spread far and wide.

An exception, out of enthusiasm, for his recent allusion to and clip from the British series The Thick of It. British humor is distinguished by being genuinely crueler than the watered-down Yank version. Compare the Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell versions of The Office and you immediately see the difference. The Thick of It is like a West Wing in which everyone ends up humiliated and embarrassed and stripped of pretense -- and if you don't think the result is funny, you have a more elevated soul than I do (or most of the population of the UK). The film In The Loop, by the same director and some of the same actors, was another not-quite-as-vicious version. This is Thick of It:

The absolutely humiliating real-life sequence of Gordon Brown unctuously chatting up a constituent and then haughtily dismissing her once in the car (but still miked up) is almost too perfect a sample of a Thick of It moment. Find this series and watch it. (My wife and I originally did thanks to our recent-grad friend Sophie, who came across it while working in London).

UPDATE: I knew there was a scene from Season 1 of Thick of It that was exactly like Gordon Brown's current disaster. Someone has just put it up on YouTube. Can Brown have been the only person in the politically-involved UK not to have watched this show?