Tony Roche helps make humiliation funny by showing how hard people work to avoid it. We rate his ensemble comedies highly, though their appetite for insults sometimes gets ahead of their interest in people.
Fi1m perspective
In The Thick of It (2005), someone can choose a phrase carefully and still make the situation worse. Tony Roche writes alongside Simon Blackwell, Jesse Armstrong and Ian Martin, and the dialogue sounds usefully untidy. The scripts leave room for improvisation, so the performers can make the confusion feel unplanned. Roche coined ‘omnishambles’, but the stronger reason to watch is the struggle to get through an exchange without causing further trouble.
In the Loop (2009) makes wounded pride a dangerous influence on government. Roche shares the screenplay credit with Armstrong, Blackwell and director Armando Iannucci. We laughed at Peter Capaldi’s bullying, then felt uncomfortable about how much we were enjoying it. Each insult changes who can speak confidently, and the speed gives the characters little time to recover. The abuse occasionally crowds out the people, which is the recurring weakness in otherwise precise writing.
The student house of Fresh Meat (2011) allows a gentler version of that embarrassment. Roche writes alongside Sam Bain, Armstrong, Tom Basden, Penelope Skinner and Jon Brown, yet the programme keeps a consistent voice. Jack Whitehall’s JP has expected money and confidence to be enough, and his bewilderment when they fail gives the jokes some sadness. The episodes run long, but the first two series are a good place to hear this writing become less aggressive without losing its bite.
With Veep (2012), Roche joins Iannucci’s American comedy, where the insults initially arrive before the characters are properly developed. A condolence card signed wrongly is enough to drive a plot, but smallness alone does not make the first season satisfying. Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives the contempt a human face as the programme finds its footing. We recommend it with patience at the beginning and a warning about the noisy final season.
Succession (2018) puts Roche among Armstrong’s writers again, alongside Lucy Prebble, Georgia Pritchett and Brown. Its media dynasty supplies another ensemble unwilling to surrender an advantage, and the performances and editing make the humiliations count. Editors Ken Eluto and William Henry are among those who cut towards the loser of an exchange, giving us time to register what a line has done. Roche’s share of a writers’ room cannot be separated neatly from everyone else’s. Start with The Thick of It, and listen to the replies as closely as the insults.
Biography
Tony Roche is an English television, radio and film comedy writer and producer. After graduating from Warwick University with a degree in English, he began as a stand-up comedian and worked on radio series including The Sunday Format before moving into television.
He contributed to Armando Iannucci projects including co-creating Broken News and writing for all four series of The Thick of It (2005–2012), on which he also directed one episode. Roche co-wrote the spin-off film In the Loop (2009), which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He later wrote for Veep and served as writer and executive producer on Succession (2018–2023).
Roche is credited with inventing the word 'omnishambles', named 2012 Word of the Year by the Oxford English Dictionary. His other credits include Fresh Meat, Avenue 5 and The Franchise.
