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Yes, Minister/Yes, Prime Minister

CORRUSCATING COMMONS satirecom, with PAUL “JERRY” EDDINGTON as hapless (and clueless) Minister for Administrative Affairs Jim Hacker fighting a losing battle with amoral Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by NIGEL “GEORGE” HAWTHORNE. “MR.” DEREK FOWLDS was stuck-in-the-middle Personal Secretary Bernard Woolley. Politely deranged stuff, and as Hacker was promoted to PM the scale of destruction got even greater. JOHNATHAN LYNN and ANTHONY JAY wrote, light entertainment music-grüppenfuhrer RONNIE HAZLEHURST penned the faintly regal theme, GERALD SCARFE supplied the watch-how-it-did-them line-drawn titles. Top cameos from ROBIN “I DIDN’T KNOW” BAILEY and GRAEME GARDEN.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. johnnyboy

    February 2, 2011 at 10:39 pm

    All very nicely done and superbly written; the characters (whether permanent or semi) had real personality so a really nice 9pm BBC2 gem. My brother gave me the complete stuff on DVD and though ‘Minister’ was good, ‘Prime Minister’ is the best. One party-piece you could do with each episode was try and work out how Sir Humphrey would crow-bar in the word “Minister” as the last utterance each time. A gem!

  2. Richardpd

    October 25, 2020 at 10:18 pm

    Even 40 years after it was made YM/YPM still stands up well, with many issues mentioned still relevant.

    I was given the DVD box set a couple of years ago & worked my way through them.

    Some people call it the Spinal Tap of politics, & many fans were politicians and civil servants.

    While Sir Humphrey was almost always the pessimist, I like how Jim & Bernard could be with the realist or optimist depending on the issue of the day.

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