The production (which also featured Emily Joyce as Claire Hutton, the only female character now that Annie Hacker had been consigned to the sidelines) opened at the Chichester Festival in the summer of 2010, running from 13 May to 5 June. Following on from the real-life General Election of 6 May, which had resulted in a Coalition Government, the script had been fine-tuned by the writers to include a few extra topical jokes, as Hacker’s anxiety over his own wafer-thin majority was made to seem remarkably current and pertinent.
The play was then moved to the Gielgud Theatre, in London’s West End, where it would run from 17 September 2010 until 15 January 2011. The response, critically and commercially, was generally very positive, with audiences and reviewers alike appearing to accept (or at least tolerate) the inevitable changes in personnel while embracing the return of the familiar elegance and intelligence that was evident in the script.
Quentin Letts, writing in the Daily Mail, rated the play’s ‘observations on the chicanery of Whitehall as cute as ever’,14 while Michael Billington, in the Guardian, expressed his admiration for the way it ventured into ‘buoyant farce’ and still managed to locate ‘its madness in a world we all recognise’,15 and the Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer enthused that it was ‘both hilarious and a telling satire on the unscrupulousness of government’.16 Some found faults in the acting (one critic, for example, judged Henry Goodman’s portrayal of Sir Humphrey ‘too heavy-handed in his coy cunning’,17) while a few felt that too much of the television show’s old intimacy had been lost (‘subtle it ain’t’18), but the overwhelming majority regarded the production as a great success.
It would later be taken on a very well attended UK tour, with a new cast (featuring Simon Williams as Sir Humphrey and Richard McCabe as Hacker), before returning for a second run in London’s West End, and was also staged, among other places, in Australia and America. The odd new topical line was added for these productions, including a couple of jokes about telephone hacking and one about the debt-ridden Greeks, and (given the publicity surrounding the ‘Operation Yewtree’ investigations19) the reference to sex with an underage girl was eventually altered to mention of multiple adult partners. The reviews were once again predominantly positive, with even the Hollywood Reporter (while betraying its unfamiliarity with the original show via its clumsy references to ‘common-touch politico Jim Hacker’ and his ‘fixer-nemesis Sir Humphrey’) praising the play for avoiding the ‘standard-issue political spoofing to focus more valuably on the foibles of actual policy and governance’.20
The experience left Jay and Lynn not only feeling vindicated for their decision to revive their great creation, but also eager to explore the possibility of using the play as the basis for another television series. Spreading out elements of the storyline across a sequence of six interrelated half-hour episodes, with the aim of illustrating how a Prime Minister cannot afford to deal with each crisis in a vacuum but rather has to contend with them in the midst of five or six other crises, they started planning how the scripts might take shape.
They were disappointed, however, to find that the BBC, when given the chance (‘out of courtesy’) to commission the new series, was cautious, requesting to see a pilot script before making a firm commitment. The writers were greatly offended by this response, arguing (somewhat disingenuously seeing as the old cast was no longer available) that ‘there were thirty-eight pilots available on DVD’. The BBC responded by explaining that it was now ‘standard policy’ to request a pilot. ‘So we said our policy was to not write a pilot for them,’ Jonathan Lynn would snap. ‘I thought it was absolutely extraordinary.’21
Curiously enough, there was no similarly furious denunciation of the commercial ITV1, or Channel 4, or Channel Five, none of whom jumped in to snatch the sitcom from under the nose of the Corporation, even though as rival terrestrial broadcasters (presumably with the same access to the thirty-eight ‘pilot’ episodes on DVD) they could have offered the sitcom roughly the same size of audience the writers surely desired. Jonathan Lynn would say, when asked if there had indeed been any other offers from the main commercial channels, ‘I have no idea’,22 while Antony Jay would say, ‘No, as I remember it, it was the original [production] company who did it.’23 (ITV1, it should be noted, did go ahead, just a year later, and commissioned a new series of another former BBC sitcom, the vastly inferior Birds of a Feather.)
The revived Yes, Prime Minister would end up instead, faute de mieux, on the niche nostalgia cable and satellite channel GOLD (formerly known as UK Gold and now partly owned by the US company Scripps Networks Interactive and partly by BBC Worldwide), where, alas, it was destined to reach a far smaller proportion of the viewing audience.
Jay and Lynn, nonetheless, were simply pleased to have secured the degree of control that they wanted over the series (co-producing it with their old BBC Head of Comedy, Gareth Gwenlan, who was now operating as a freelancer), and proceeded to write each script with the same kind of care and meticulous research that they had lavished on all of the old episodes. David Haig and Henry Goodman agreed to continue in their stage roles, while Chris Larkin (who as a teenager had studied the original shows while working for his A level in Politics and Government) was recruited to take over as Bernard Woolley from Jonathan Slinger (who was preparing to appear as Hamlet for the RSC), and Zoe Telford was brought in to replace Emily Joyce as Claire Hutton.
Jonathan Lynn, who would co-direct with Gareth Gwenlan, took primary responsibility for preparing the cast for the recordings. ‘I was a hundred per cent involved with everything,’ he later confirmed. ‘Tony, who is somewhat older than me and has health issues, came to the read-through and first rehearsal every week, and the dress rehearsal and performance. There was some give and take with regard to lines: essentially the actors would sometimes point out that something they were saying could be clarified in a particular way, and I would sometimes agree to change it. It was a fairly collaborative atmosphere, I think.’24
The schedule was basically the same as it had been back in the 1980s. Each episode (now timed at around twenty minutes, due to its being broken up and extended by ten minutes of adverts) would be rehearsed during the week, and then it was recorded in front of a live studio audience – now as before, ironically, at BBC Television Centre – on the Sunday evening.
One thing that had certainly changed since the last time Yes, Prime Minister was on the screen was the amount of pre-publicity that any show could expect, and, for a show with the pedigree of this one, the coverage was exceptional for a programme on a minority channel. There were countless interviews and articles in the newspapers and magazines, on radio and television and in various places on the web, all attracting attention to the imminent revival of a classic comedy show. There was also a tie-in documentary, Yes, Prime Minister: Re-elected, featuring the two writers and the new cast. Few existing fans of the old sets of series, nor many who had only seen the stage play, would have failed to notice what was due to happen. Yes, Prime Minister was coming back.
The first episode, entitled, ‘Crisis at the Summit’, was broadcast at 9 p.m. on Tuesday 15 January 2013. Featuring a credit sequence that used a new set of caricatures by Gerald Scarfe and an upbeat rerecording of Ronnie Hazlehurst’s original theme tune, it was basically an updated version of the first act of the play, introducing the initial elements of the existing plot and also reintroducing the new cast characters.
Again set in Chequers, again over the course of an autumn weekend, Hacker has sought refuge there after enduring a media grilling in London over how badly things have been going:
INTERVIEWER:
So, Prime Minister, the pound is falling, the Footsie’s dropping like a stone, inflation could be on the way up, your coalition is divided, and now the conference on the Euro crisis looks like a dead end. It’s all a bit of a disaster, isn’t it?
HACKER:
You know, I’m glad you asked me that …
Tired after trying in vain to guide his fellow Europe
an leaders in the direction of an acceptable consensus (‘It’s like herding cats!’), he privately fears the worst about the summit meeting (‘Dealing with Europe isn’t about success, it’s about concealing failure’), and, in spite of one last gasp of bravado, is clearly in desperate need of some help:
HACKER:
It is time for me to get hands on and give some leadership.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Oh, good.
HACKER:
So, tell me what I should do.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Now that’s just the kind of leadership we need!
HACKER:
Thank you, Humphrey!
The rest of the opening instalment concentrates on establishing the plotline concerning the rescue offer from Kumranistan, drawing on many of the best early lines and exchanges from the play. It ends with the Eurosceptic Hacker, having been enlightened by his special adviser, demanding that Sir Humphrey admit that the Kumranistani loan will only reach the UK via the European Central Bank, and will thus be dependent on the Government abandoning sterling and joining the euro. ‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ the Cabinet Secretary reluctantly confirms.
The first episode of the ‘new and exclusive’ series was watched by an estimated 283,000 people (which amounted to approximately 1.17 per cent of the available audience). It easily beat the channel’s twelve-month ‘slot average’ of 114,000 viewers (about 0.47 per cent of the available audience),25 but it was a poor reward for a sitcom that had always worked so hard to engage with the biggest and broadest audience possible.
The acting was uneven. The great success was David Haig (now sans moustache) as Hacker. A tightly coiled ball of nervy frustration, suggesting a dollop of Harold Wilson, a big drip of John Major and a wee dram of Gordon Brown, he was instantly believable as a Prime Minister weighed down by the woes of the nation while worried about the intrigues and schemes that are afoot within his party. Never able entirely to ignore the nagging feeling that he is not up to a job whose crucial description is still missing, there was a delicate sense of pathos about him that added to the air of authenticity.
Less successful was Henry Goodman as Sir Humphrey, mugging almost as much as he had done in the stage play. In stark contrast to Nigel Hawthorne’s portrayal, whose calm visage allowed only the subtlest hint at the synaptic acrobatics that were going on behind the bland mandarin’s mask, Goodman’s characterisation was all show and tell, with squat-thrusting eyebrows, darting eyes and a ready grin that suggested he was more Tigger than Jeeves, more Uriah Heep than Iago, and certainly not the discreetly dangerous, panther-like plotter of the original series.
Chris Larkin’s Woolley also lacked the unforced charm and well-schooled dutifulness of Derek Fowlds’ interpretation, although his sleepy-haired naivety, if writ a little too large, did at least suit the comedy of his character as it was now written. Zoe Telford, on the other hand, struck a sure tone from the beginning as the driven and doubt-free Claire Hutton.
What was most reassuringly impressive about the episode was the script, which was full of Jay and Lynn’s trademark rigour and wit. It was topical (WOOLLEY: ‘A Hung Parliament’s a bad thing?’ SIR HUMPHREY: ‘Yes, Bernard. Hanging’s too good for them!’), amusingly nerdish (‘No Prime Minister or US President has been elected without a full head of hair since Eisenhower and Churchill in the 1950s’) and admirably candid (SIR HUMPHREY: ‘We will have to pay a premium on the loan, but not for many years to come, when there will be a different government.’ HACKER: ‘Well, that’s all right, then!’), and provided viewers with the main reason for staying with the sitcom and watching the rest of the run.
The reaction to the start of the series, however, was mixed. Among the reviews that arrived the following day, the Independent’s Tom Sutcliffe felt that the pace of the comedy ‘was a beat or two off’;26 the Daily Telegraph’s Mark Monahan was much more enthusiastic, praising the ‘terrific’ cast and claiming that the ‘writing is as sharp as ever’;27 while Sam Wollaston, writing in the Guardian, delivered the most damning of all the responses, branding the decision to bring back the show ‘a mistake’ before adding: ‘Best forgotten, lest it sully fond memories’.28
Over on Twitter, where snap judgements popped up throughout the duration of the programme like fleas hopping on a dog, the comments were too diverse to confirm anything other than the incoherence of the medium of their expression: ‘It all feels horribly forced’; ‘Absolutely superb, very funny and brilliantly written’; ‘Bad casting. No flair’; ‘Pretty epic’; ‘Slightly disappointing that the first episode of new Yes, Prime Minister is a rehash of the stage version. And that it’s not very funny’; ‘At last some great comic writing back on TV’; ‘An outright embarrassment of sub-mediocrity especially after the golden gem that was the original’; ‘Pleasantly surprised so far by this remake’; and ‘Utterly devoid of charm. Memory sullied’.29
Several prominent politicians, who were well known to have been fervent fans of the original series, would aver that they were, alas, so busy attending to affairs of state that they had ‘not yet had the opportunity to see’ either this or subsequent episodes.30 This was, in a sense, an encouraging sign, bearing in mind the recent fashion for Prime Ministers and Ministers to down tools in order to publicise their opinions on everything pop cultural from the plight of fictional characters in Coronation Street31 to the carefully choreographed crises of contestants on The X Factor,32 but, given their previously professed strong allegiance to this particular show (and the eager participation of some of them in the pre-publicity for its successor), their seeming failure even to record it for future scrutiny suggested a certain reluctance to welcome the revival.
The sole survivor of the original trio of stars, Derek Fowlds, was another who was left feeling far from satisfied by the new version. ‘They were very, very fine actors,’ he would say of the cast, ‘but, for me, it seemed that they were trying too hard to be funny, and I’m afraid I didn’t believe a word of it. It just reminded me of how natural and truthful Paul and Nigel were as those people.’33
The rest of the episodes continued to develop the basic storyline covered in the play, while also entwining such other topics as MPs’ expenses claims, secrecy, leaks, patronage, Scottish independence, postcolonial diplomacy, the huge debt crisis, the influence of oil-rich countries, the purpose and influence of the BBC (an old hobby horse of Antony Jay’s) – and the debate concerning global warming (a more recent hobby horse of Jay’s34). There was also, in the background, a return to the original series’ reflection on the differences between personal and public morality.
One of the highlights was a summary by Sir Humphrey of Whitehall realpolitik:
SIR HUMPHREY:
Bernard, there are two worlds. There is the world of high principles, noble ideals and eternal verities. That is the world of philosophers, theologians, academics. And then there is the world of unsavoury realities and squalid practicalities. The world of politics and government. My world, Bernard, and yours. The real world.
WOOLLEY:
But Sir Humphrey, this is a matter of black and white.
SIR HUMPHREY:
No, no, there’s nothing black and white in our world, Bernard. Ours is a world of dirty grey. I appreciate you wish to take the moral course. Well, sometimes it is unclear which course that is. Politicians, they can talk about what is right and what is wrong. We talk about what works, and what doesn’t. So we put morality in the pending tray.35
The series was brought to a close on 19 February 2013 with an episode (‘A Tsar is Born’) which sought to tie all of the strands of the story together. Close to collapsing under the strain of such multiple worries as an unproductive European summit, an international financial crisis, a disloyal Cabinet, a critical media, damaging new computer predictions about global warming and the ‘Kumranistani pervert’ reneging on his country’s deal with the UK, Hacker is close to giving up and resigning. Sir Humphrey saves the day by coming up with yet another ingenious plan.<
br />
He proposes using the idea of global warming – a concept that he has previously treated with cheerful contempt – to fashion a new policy that will transform the Prime Minister’s fortunes at a stroke. After boldly committing the Government to battle climate change, he can introduce a special global warming tax on fuel to generate much-needed revenue in the short term, while ‘phasing in’ any additional expenditure over the course of the next half-century; he can also be seen to demand that all other major countries agree to review their emissions policies, and then, when they fail to change their ways, he can call for a series of earnest international conferences to reconsider their decisions. ‘We can, Prime Minister, under your leadership, agree to save the world!’ The beauty of the whole initiative, Sir Humphrey points out, is that ‘it will be fifty years before anybody can possibly prove you’re wrong’. Hacker is thrilled (‘The voters will love me!’), and not even Woolley’s scepticism can spoil his sense of redemption:
WOOLLEY:
There is one problem: nothing will have actually been achieved.
SIR HUMPHREY:
It will sound as though it has. So people will think it has.
HACKER:
That’s all that matters!
In terms of critical attention, the series went out with a whimper, with few reviewers pausing to reflect on its run. The Times was an exception, judging the finale ‘as sharp and funny as all the rest’,36 but, as with the vast majority of the output on the minority channels, the show (after one short and sharp blast of pre-publicity) seemed to have been sent out under the radar of the national press. The viewing figures had remained tiny, ranging from the initial peak of 306,000 down to a mere 109,000 for the sixth and final episode, averaging just 202,000 per programme.37 It was still a coup for GOLD, which boosted its performance in that time slot quite significantly, but for a sitcom of such stature, and with such a history, it really did not seem right.
A Very Courageous Decision Page 37
