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Yes, Minister and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister are British sitcoms about the struggle between James "Jim" Hacker (played by Paul Eddington ), the government minister of the (fictional) department of Administrative Affairs (and later as Prime Minister) and his civil servants and ministerial colleagues. Nigel Hawthorne plays Sir Humphrey Appleby, KCB, MVO, MA (Oxon), a senior civil servant, Permanent Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs and later Cabinet Secretary, with Derek Fowlds in a crucial supporting role as Hacker's private secretary Bernard Wooley. All 38 episodes were written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn and all but one are 30 minutes in length. Yes, Minister came sixth in a 2004 BBC poll to find ' Britain's Best Sitcom'. In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were jointly placed 9th.Much of the humour of the show derives from the conflict between United Kingdom CabinetIn British politics, the Cabinet is comprised of the most senior government ministers, most of them heads of government departments with the title " Secretary of State". It is a vital convention that all Cabinet members are accountable to Parliament, and ministers who believe they are in charge, and the members of the British Civil ServiceIn British politics, the British Civil Service is the permanent bureaucracy that administers the United Kingdom. The British practice of maintaining a permanent, theoretically politically neutral, Civil Service with staff who are not dependent on elected who are really running the countryGeography Politics A country a land or a state is a geographical area and an independent political entity with its own government, administration, laws, often a constitution, police, military, tax rules, and people. All recognized states follow some degre. A typical episode will deal with Jim Hacker wanting to move on a pressing political issue only to find Sir Humphrey blocking and stalling his efforts in order to maintain the status quo. Most episodes end with Sir Humphrey on top, though the Minister occasionally has the upper hand. Other characteristics include Sir Humphrey's complicated sentences, his cynical views on government and general toffiness, Hacker's overall bumbling and Bernard's linguistic pedantry. Starting with the seventh episode, every episode ends with one of the characters (usually Humphrey) saying, either "Yes, Minister" or "Yes, Prime Minister", depending on the series.
Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister have been cited by political scientistsPolitical science is the study of politics. It involves the study of structure and process in government or any equivalent system that attempts to assure safety, fairness, and closure across a broad range of risks and access to a broad range of commons fo for their accurate and sophisticated portrayal of these relationships. The shows were very popular in governmental circles and it was the favourite programme of then Prime Minister Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS (born October 13, 1925) is a British politician and the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a position she held from 1979 to 1990. She is a member of the Conservative Party and still, leading to her staging a 4 minute sketch with the two principal actors of the show. Another 10 minute sketch was performed as part of a Christmas Special in 1982Events January January 6 William Bonin is convicted of being the "freeway killer". January 8 AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara du. Interestingly, she read the show as an indictment of the Civil service while others believe it is an indictment of the British parliamentary system. Most people agree that it is a combination of both.
The writers placed Hacker at the centre of the political spectrum, and were careful to identify his party headquarters as Central House (a portmanteau of Conservative Central Office and Labour's Transport House). Despite this, the thrust of the early episodes was in a generally neo-liberal direction. The episode Jobs for the Boys was clear in its rejection of the tripartite form of corporatism that Mrs Thatcher's government was determined to roll back. Antony Jay was personally sympathetic to the economically liberal elements of Thatcherism and served as a part time speech writer to Nigel LawsonNigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby PC (born March 11 1932), British politician, was Chancellor of the Exchequer between June 1983 and October 1989. His tenure in that office was longer than that of any of his predecessors since David Lloyd George ( 1908. Jonathon Lynn was, even initially, less sympathetic to Mrs Thatcher and as the decade progressed and Mrs Thatcher's personality came to eclipse the policy agenda, the partnership produced episodes such as Man Overboard which satirised the Westland affairThe Westland affair was a political crisis for the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in 1986. The argument was a result of differences of opinion within the government as to the future of the UK helicopter industry. The struggling Westland comp.
In Trollopian style, certain of the minor characters in the series were apparently drawn from identifiable real world originals. The acerbic nationalised industry chairman, Sir Wally MacFarlane, was an affectionate caricature of Sir Monty Finniston (of British Steel); the Prime Ministerial special advisor on efficiency, Sir Mark Spencer, was a reference to Derek Rayner who joined the first Thatcher Government from the chain store group Marks and Spencer; and the journalists John Pilgrim and Alex Andrews were evident references to John Pilger and Andrew Alexander. By contrast, Hacker's Prime Ministerial special advisor, Dorothy Wainwright, predated the arrival of Sarah Hogg (who bore her some resemblance) as John Major's advisor some years later.
In a tribute program to the series, screened by the BBC in early 2004, it was revealed that Jay and Lynn had drawn on information provided by two insiders from the governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, namely Marcia Williams and Bernard Donohue. The episode, entitled The Moral Dimension, in which Hacker and his staff engaged in the scheme of secretly consuming alcohol on a trade mission to an Islamic state, was also revealed to have been based on a real incident that took place in Pakistan.
