I blooming love Robyn. Since she was first dumped on the Department of Social Affairs she has acted as the anti-Tucker of the show. Nervous to the point of shaking, doe-eyed in the face of even the most simple decision, and nautical miles out of her depth, it’s hard to shake the feeling that if you worked in government you would probably be her.  Take the loss of a USB stick of details. The most similar real world example of this was November 1 2008, exactly a year ago. This is becoming a slightly common feature of plots. Community Support Park Officers are laugh-out-loud funny because it was so plausible…a couple of years ago, but it doesn’t seem conceivable now. And, thinking about it, last week’s plot of a politician pondering how it would appear to the public to see their child go to a non-state school is a bit 2001. Does this matter? Well, not really, in comedy terms because, as has been documented to death, the show is still perfectly constructed in new and innovative ways with every episode brutally well written and flawlessly acted. (It’s also worth noting that it is only because these facts are so solidly on the record that I’m picking flaws here.) But it sure takes the sting out of the satirical punch when the real-world politics have changed so quickly that what you’re watching doesn’t feel as current as the show use to. One of the astounding things about The Thick Of It is how quickly you get to know characters. This is only her second episode, and already we’ve watched a faux-perky Murray declare she is “actually quite a fun person”, before descending to have “a face like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle” as her department’s ineptitude is discovered by Malcolm, and then sitting in a car just twenty minutes in to the episode, looking like a broken woman. Or to be more specific, the absolute spit of Jacqui Smith after her husband was caught claiming porn on her expenses in March. Where can Murray’s character be taken from here? Her predecessor, Hugh, was bumbling from start to finish, but Murray has taken a precipitous fall in such a short time that she can hardly hold out for the rest of this eight-episode run. Fingers crossed, we might see the return of the opposition, who appear to have been sent to an island with Scottish Jamie. Read our review of the season opener here.