Armando Iannucci Comedy to Return to BBC2 With Leveson-Style Story

LONDON - Writer and producer Armando Iannucci's political comedy The Thick of It will return to BBC2 for a fourth season later this year and feature a storyline mindful of the real-life Leveson Inquiry into media ethics launched in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

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The Guardian reported that the channel said that the first new season of the show since 2009 will be a case of art imitating life.

"This series takes The Thick of It into exciting and uncharted territory: a new coalition government," the paper quoted Iannucci as saying about the seven-episode season. The British administration has also been a coalition government led by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Iannucci also dropped his second hint in as many months that the show's characters will face a public inquiry in the vein of the Leveson hearings that have seen testimony from former prime ministers like Tony Blair and John Major and media titans, including News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch.

"For the first time too a storyline takes us all the way through the series right to the bitter, bitter end, with government and opposition convulsed in an incident that questions every political convention imaginable, but in a funny way," Iannucci said.

No further details were available.

He also recently told the audience at a private screening of his U.S. vice presidential comedy Veep that the Leveson Inquiry prime material for lampooning, according to the Guardian.

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai