“VEEP” goes to the Soviet Union in Armando Iannucci’s biting send-up of the Soviet dictator and his band of scheming sycophant ministers who vie for power after his demise in 1953.

Hilarious plotting, clumsy jostling for power and idiotic hijinks follow the supreme leaders death. All of the top lackeys have been suddenly turned into a bunch of scared and malicious children — milquetoast Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), wiseguy Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), bewildered Molotov (Michael Palin), thuggish Zhukov (Jason Isaacs), and depraved Beria (Simon Russell Beale), with Stalin’s drunken son Vasily (Rupert Friend) and jaded daughter Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough) off to the side.

The Death Of Stalin is superbly cast, and acted with icy and ruthless force by an impeccable ensemble tour-de-force. In the hands of one of the funniest and most distinctive political satirists of our time, it is not hard to see comparisons to events unfolding in a different capital today.

THE DEATH OF STALIN screens with THE FULL STORY.