Your next box set: The Thick of It

Bumping into The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci, Alastair Campbell once snapped, "If it isn't the bloke who's been making a living out of me for the past 10 years." Typical spin: the satirical series only started screening in 2005 – although its superbly sweary spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker is scarily like Campbell. "I'm a man of principle," spits Tucker (Peter Capaldi): "I like to know whether I'm lying to save the skin of a tosser or a moron."

The Thick Of It creates as ugly a picture of politics as can still make you laugh. A lot. Over three series and two specials, the Ministry of Social Affairs is revealed as a rollercoaster wreck of gibberish jargon ("Fourth Sector Pathfinder Initiative") policy made up on the hoof ("pet Asbos"), titanically tits-up interviews and – as Tucker "slowly rumbles towards you like prostate cancer" – frantic attempts to pass the buck. There's not a principle in sight.

Clueless adviser Ollie (Chris Addison) is "a little bit morally bankrupt, and a tiny bit dangerously unreliable" says self-righteous civil servant Terri (Joanna Scanlan). Minister Hugh Abbot (Chris Langham) is essentially I'm Alan Partridge, MP (Iannucci co-wrote Partridge): as gaffe-prone as he is greedily self-serving. "Look what I have to work with," sighs Tucker. Langham got axed from the series – and imprisoned – over child porn offences in 2007.

In comes Rebecca Front's new minister Nicola Murray (Tucker: "the only other candidate was my left bollock with a smiley face drawn on it"). When a viciously smarmy Mandelson figure (David Haig) effects Tucker's almost Shakespearean demise, series three spins way beyond comedy. "You will fucking see me again!" Tucker snarls.

But will we? Since 2009's disappointing movie spin-off, In The Loop, Iannucci's been working on an American version, Veep, while an imminent fourth series of The Thick of It will surely zoom in on bizarrely decent Tory Peter Mannion (Roger Allam). Meanwhile, this brilliant box set offers you the opportunity to, as Tucker says: "Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off."