Veep: Can White House politics be funny?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as a vice presidential disaster in HBO's new comedy — a rare effort to tap the White House for more than West Wing-style drama

In HBO's new comedy Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a Vice President who realizes too late what a thankless, stressful job it really is.
(Image credit: HBO/Bill Gray)

While TV dramas about high-stakes Oval Office dealings have succeeded, from The West Wing to ABC's current hit, Scandal, efforts to wring comedy from the same milieu have sputtered. See: 1985's ill-fated Hail to the Chief and Comedy Central's animated spoof Lil' Bush. HBO's Veep, which premieres Sunday night, may just buck the trend. The new comedy stars Seinfeld's Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Vice President Selina Meyer, a successful former senator who is pressured into the VP role, only to find it thankless and powerless. Her eagerness to please keeps causing her to screw up and the President doesn't like her. (Watch the trailer below.) The series was created by Armando Ianucci, who penned the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the profane British political comedy In the Loop. Does Veep prove that White House comedy can actually work on TV?

It's a comedy "gem": "Imagine an even funnier, infinitely angrier, and less sentimental Aaron Sorkin," says Tim Goodman at The Hollywood Reporter. That's what Ianucci's Veep scripts are like. He nails the back-stabbing, the bureaucratic frustrations, and the political gamesmanship of D.C., translating them into razor-sharp jokes. As the dejected, desperate Selina, trapped in an unappealing job and clamoring for more power, Louis-Dreyfus delivers an "Emmy-worthy effort."

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