Michael Spicer’s razor-sharp satire No Room is back for a second series—and thank whatever god oversees the absurd theatre of politics and media, because we need it now more than ever.
For the uninitiated, No Room is a gloriously awkward mockumentary-style series that puts Spicer’s signature dry wit in a fictional PR firm where moral compromise isn’t a bug—it’s the whole operating system. Every episode sees Spicer and his team attempt to navigate the minefield of modern scandal, spin, and performative apologies with a mixture of denial, deflection, and absurd euphemism. It’s The Thick of It meets The Office, if David Brent wore a lanyard that said “Damage Limitation Unit.”
What makes the show sing is Spicer’s commitment to stillness amidst chaos. Where others would gurn or go big, he smoulders with weary disdain. The humour simmers under the surface—often in the form of a withering glance or a pause so pregnant it should qualify for maternity leave. And yet, somehow, the impact is explosive.
The second series ups the ante. The clients are more clueless. The stakes are more existential. And the team’s methods—if you can call passive-aggressive emails and reluctant hashtag campaigns “methods”—are more hilariously misguided than ever. What’s terrifying is how plausible it all feels. You can practically smell the almond flat whites and sweaty denial in every boardroom scene.
It’s a testament to Spicer’s skill as a writer and performer that he continues to skewer public life with such elegance and accuracy. In an age of overstatement, No Room succeeds by underplaying its hand—letting the comedy leak through the cracks rather than smashing the glass.
Series two doesn’t reinvent the wheel, nor should it. It doubles down on what made the first outing so sharp: a bleakly funny, brilliantly observed indictment of the PR-industrial complex and our collective tolerance for bullshit. If anything, it feels even more vital now.
Michael Spicer isn’t just making us laugh—he’s holding up a mirror. And what’s reflected back is very British, very broken, and very, very funny.