Jesse Armstrong

“It doesn't worry me, the idea of coming up with new stuff.”

“With my writing partner, Sam Bain, I have gone on to write for lots of shows, including our co-creation 'Peep Show,' two series of which have been shown on Channel 4. But politics has always attracted me.”

“Under a government committed to cutting public services to the bone, the police are often left to clean up all sorts of untidy situations that are really social work or housing, mental and physical health issues.”

“I'm in the game of realism so happy endings probably feel a little bit too neat for life.”

“War isn't funny, obviously.”

“As a writer you often watch things with a certain distance.. More often, you're worried that something that you have invented is going to become reality, and you'll look like you copied it.”

“If you're writing a show about modern media moguls, Rupert Murdoch and his family are an incredibly important model and some of their disputes and the dynamics have been very vivid.”

“You've only got so much plot, character and psychological capital. One day it will be gone and you don't know when that day is. The fear is that it'll sneak up on you when you're not looking.”

“If you're making a satirical show and you're aiming to change something, I'd say you're on a fool's errand.”

“You can put all your philistine-dom on TV.”

“It's sad ending 'Peep Show,' but it'll be fun starting some new shows.”

“Sitcom characters, my writing partner Sam Bain and I sometimes tell each other, are not normally self-conscious. Or not quite. The best sitcom characters are probably just a little self-conscious. Deep enough to feel pain and humiliation, but shallow enough that there are no hidden depths.”

“Trump is just extraordinarily unusual.”

“Wimbledon fortnight is always a testing time for the home worker. I spend most of it on the phone to my writing partner pretending to chat about character motivation when actually I'm checking if he's working - listening out for any telltale bleeps from the line-call machine off the TV in the background.”

“I suppose terrible things happen in the world all the time and some of them we feel a particular connection to and some of them we don't.”

“Unlike many hour-long scripted American dramas, 'Succession' has very few standing sets.”

“The writers' room is an open forum where anything mad or weird that aggressively shakes up the show can be suggested and considered.”

“I can just about enjoy it. There is an initial hurdle, where I feel like, oh goodness me, I'm going to watch a sitcom or a drama and it's my competition. But luckily quality tends to override that, so when I have been watching 'Him and Her' or 'Girls' or any of the shows I admire, you simply enjoy them.”

“I don't buy the thing that you can't do satire in the age of Trump. You just have to be funny and figure out the angles.”

“When you're a nerd, you know there's a million types of neurotic self-loathing.”