Life follows art Iannucci's satire seen as prescient 'documentary'

For years, British politics has echoed the ludicrous and sometimes concerning storylines of Armando Iannucci's The Thick of It. Now, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris's bid to become commander in chief, Americans are using the show Veep as proof of the satirist's gift for prophecy.

- Nadia Khomami

So what does Iannucci think about being dubbed the Nostradamus of western politics? "Well, I knew that was going to happen," he joked.

Viewership of Veep, which tells the story of the struggle of vicepresident Selina Meyer (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) to reach the Oval Office, was up by more than 350% this week - with audiences drawing countless parallels between Harris and Iannucci's fictional creation. "Was the HBO show Veep just a documentary filmed in the past about the future?" one X user asked.

But Iannucci, who has worked in television satire for decades, points to the cyclical nature of news as a way of predicting what is around the corner. "If you look at early episodes of [80s sitcom] Yes Minister, it's all about Europe, cuts, the NHS," he said. "These themes don't go away. Ministerial cockups take the same form again and DEN again and again. Even with fiction, if you've got the research right, reality will always shine through.