Veep is back on TV tonight — thank god

VEEP is the kind of funny that leads to embarrassing, full-throated guffaws that may or may not be accompanied by a little wee.

IT’S rare for a TV show in its sixth year to be this on-form. It’s rarer still for a seasoned TV show to be better than it was in its breakout early years.

And yet here we are. Veep is the best comedy still on air. Its satirical bite is the sharpest it’s ever been and the characters have had years to develop into the acidic buffoons they are.

Oh, and it is outrageously, stupidly funny. The kind of funny that leads to embarrassing, full-throated guffaws that may or may not be accompanied by a little wee.

Veep is back on Australian screens tonight and it couldn’t be more welcome.

After a year of increasingly absurd political theatre in the world, it’s almost comforting to see the bumbling and incompetent characters in Veep, knowing that they’re all perpetually miserable.

It was always going to be a challenge for political satires like Veep during the reign of the improbable Trump years. How do you skewer a political culture that’s more absurd than anything they could come up with on TV?

It might’ve been tempting for Veep to react to the Trump phenomena but, wisely, it’s stuck to what it does best — telling the misguided exploits of former Vice President, former President, current “statesman” Selena Meyer, and all of those trapped in the chaos around her.

Season five ended with Selena and her minions turfed out of the White House after a deadlocked election and some bracingly silly machinations which saw a third, out-of-nowhere woman elected to the presidency.

‘I’ve made a huge mistake.’

After a stint in a “spa” to recover, Selena is back and trying to craft her legacy. She’s got fancy offices in a crime-ridden part of NYC (for the optics) and is the figurehead for the Selena Meyers Foundation for Adult Literacy, AIDS and Democracy. Of course.

She’s desperately trying to stay relevant while contending with living on a monthly allowance meted out by her daughter and facing the indignity of economy class on a commercial plane (shock horror!).

Her crew aren’t doing much better — Mike is struggling with his three newly adopted kids and has adopted a permanent, unshakable “loser” air, Amy has hitched her wagons to an “aw, shucks” local pollie running for Governor, Dan weaselled his way into a TV anchor job with a ballbreaker co-host, Kent and Ben are stuck working for Jonah and Gary is, well, Gary is always Gary.

Like I said, everyone is miserable.

The fall from Mount Olympus has not been kind and we’ll get to see how these terrible, terrible people deal with such a humiliating defeat. Bring it on.

Veep season six starts tonight on Foxtel’s Showcase at 8.30pm with a double episode.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @wenleima.

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