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Monday, April 13, 2015

The romance in a sitcom like "Veep" proves we're not as cynical as we like to pretend

Great New York Times thing about the highly-charged but platonic love affair at the centre of the brilliant "Veep". Short clip here.

Julia-Louis Dreyfus plays vice-President Selina Mayer. Tony Hale is Gary Walsh, her "body man", whose job is to be no more than a pace behind her at all times, carrying her professional and personal necessities and steering her round the thousand hazards littering the path of her every day. He's the only person in the world she can trust. It's no exaggeration to say he worships the ground she walks upon, and paces out every bit of it to make sure she doesn't come to any harm.

Funny that romance only seems to get on the TV under the guise of comedy. It was the affair between Jim and Pam that kept "The Office" going so long. The love between Homer and Marge is what gives "The Simpsons" its heart.

The more cynical the world in which the comedy is set - and the characters in "Veep" make the people in Armando Iannucci's "The Thick Of It" look like the folk in "The Vicar Of Dibley" - the more our need to believe they're capable of something better.

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