It's Murray Time!

[meddow]

I wanted to contribute to halfamoon and decided I would celebrate Nicola Murray, lead character and Secretary of State for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship in the third series of The Thick of It. I'm not sure how well known it is, but The Thick of It changed last year from a show with a male lead, to a show with a female lead, and really, how often does that happen? That in itself is pretty awesome and that way, she is actually quite ground breaking.

But, really, what I love most about her in terms of being an awesome female character is that she is not the singular and not-so-funny female island of competency in a world of screwed up and hilarious males. No, Nicola is just a screwed up, hilarious and incompetent as all the men in The Thick of It. That sounds contradictory, but the above trope seems to be the norm in comedy these days and I think it's fantastic when women get to be funny.

Comments

[lucinatrivia.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with Nicola not being the Competent Woman Surrounded By Comedy Men - Rebecca Front wrote somewhere about how she had to play that role in an early show and she was determined not to get into it here. But as a character, one of my favourite moments is when the useless conference press officer is being useless, to which Nicola replies something about 'not to be rude - fuck it, let's be rude: it's your job.'

[meddow.livejournal.com]

I really hope that we get some behind the scenes stuff in the DVD release as to how Nicola was developed as a character, because it appears that Rebecca Front had a huge hand in it, for which I adore her so much.

I really love that Nicola doesn't attempt to be nicer than the guys. One thing I noticed when doing the quotes is that Nicola really holds her own with the swearing. With Jamie no longer on the show, I think it's between her and Ollie as to who is the second most foul-mouthed character.