...complains Armando Iannucci

Armando Iannucci has branded the American executives who tried to remake The Thick Of It as ‘buffoons’.

The US show was never picked up after a pilot, and Iannucci said it had been stripped of all that made the British original stand out.

‘It was terrible,’ he said. ‘Conventionally shot and there was no improvisation or swearing.’

‘There were just scores of people working on it, all called vice-president this and that, and a lot of them were buffoons.’

He has previously blasted the BBC for selling the rights to the highest bidder – ABC – without including him in the decision.

Iannucci acted as executive producer but in the new interview with Radio Times said: ‘The mistake is to think that because America has this tremendous influence internationally, therefore all Americans are brilliant.

He said the experience of working with cable network HBO to make the spin-off satire Veep, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as US vice-president Selina Meyer, was the ‘opposite’ as they left him alone to make the best show he could.

Iannucci also revealed he is directing a slapstick film based in London ‘about a guy who becomes famous for the wrong reasons on YouTube – just for something that somebody has filmed of him, and he wants to track down the person who shot it’.

He also recently revealed that another possible TV project would be about internet billionaires.

Published: 4 Sep 2012