Created by the political comedy pessimist Armando Iannucci as an American analogue to his cult British comedy The Thick of It, Veep views 99% of elected officials as ruthless, power-hungry loons, and the other 1% as rubes. Better than pretty much any other show about systems of institutional power, it demonstrates how politicians from both sides of the aisle are, more often than not, willing to dilute and diminish their “beliefs” in order to maintain their own power. It’s farcical, sure, but it’s not exactly satire – everything rings far too true for that.
Kevin Dunn as Ben Cafferty, Sam Richardson as Richard Splett and Anna Chlumsky as Amy Brookheimer in Veep. Photograph: HBO/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock