It was hard to gauge the general reaction to the revival, other than to conclude that it was underwhelming. With traditional critical sources largely silent, and the views expressed via the new social media far too mixed to be in any sense conclusive, all one could say with any confidence about the new Yes, Prime Minister was that it had been neither a complete failure nor an unqualified success.
There had been some good things. David Haig’s performance, from start to finish, was extremely well judged, conveying a sense of mounting panic and paranoia with a naturalness that kept the core of the show close to plausibility even when things were becoming rather cartoon-like out on the periphery. His Hacker was nothing like Paul Eddington’s Hacker, and was all the better for it.
It was also impossible not to admire, yet again, the cleverness of the scripts, which, while lacking some of the sureness and subtlety of their classic predecessors, still shone in comparison to the majority of what else was on offer in the sitcoms of the time. There were, in addition, a few nice little visual touches, such as Sir Humphrey’s grudging nod to calls for sartorial informality by pushing his pocket handkerchief down just out of view.
There had also been some bad things. The studio audience, for example, sounded too eager to laugh, cheer and clap, and it diminished the achievement of those lines that genuinely merited such an explosive response. One of the many remarkable things about the original series was that there would be times when the on-screen insights would be so clear, pertinent and provocative that one could actually ‘hear’ the studio audience fall silent and think about the issue. In the new version, there seemed to be a kind of compulsion to have every comic line, no matter how simple or slight, boosted by the sound of raucous guffaws, which was certainly in keeping with the fashion in broadcasting to bellow ‘give it up’ at audiences (as if laughter and applause was some kind of quasi-feudal obligation), but which nonetheless did a disservice to the memory of the old shows.
There was also a loss of tension in the traditional comic triangle between Hacker, Sir Humphrey and Woolley. Sir Humphrey, perhaps partly due to the presence of the fragrant special adviser who seemed forever draped over Hacker’s sofa, no longer appeared to have any real rapport with his Prime Minister. While Hacker staggered around his study like a wounded animal, looking at windows, floors and walls more often than he did human beings, the static Sir Humphrey’s oddly oleaginous smirks and sneers seemed to be emitted purely for the benefit of the cameras.
Another flaw was the fact that, as Hacker was now so much more aware of Sir Humphrey’s scheming, most of the comedy to be had from the Prime Minister’s deluded belief that he was still outwitting his Cabinet Secretary was lost. This was, after all, a political world that had itself been influenced by Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister: the new show was trying to satirise a class of people who had, at least in part, been shaped by the old shows.38
Bernard Woolley, meanwhile, no longer glanced back and forth at each of his masters as they competed to control his thoughts, but rather sought each of them out separately in order to express, rather gratuitously, how alarmed he was at what was happening. He was, as a consequence, not so much one-third of a trio but rather a solitary commentator on a duo.
None of this, however, did anything of great significance to affect the reputation of the original series. Some people had sought out the revivals, onstage and on screen, and some of them had been impressed, while some were disappointed. Many more had preferred to stay focused on the repeats, the DVDs and the memories, appreciating a great sitcom at its best.
The reactions, for and against, served to show how much the show still meant. More than thirty years on from its first appearance, it remained lodged in so many hearts and minds, no longer just a television programme, more part of the whole climate of popular political opinion. It was a remarkable achievement by the writers and the actors, and by the original broadcaster that had dared to give their show a home, and it would never be forgotten.
Before Yes Minister, sitcoms were valued mainly for the quantity of their laughs. After Yes Minister, sitcoms were also valued for the quality of their ideas. That, in terms of a contribution to television, to humour and to politics, was about as great and as good as it could get.
EPILOGUE
I believe that British television rests on specific British traditions, and in the first place, that it rests on the literary and dramatic genius of the British people and, secondly, on the sophistication in constitutional matters which you might expect from a country which has been talking itself in and out of trouble, and on the whole succeeding, for a long time.
Huw Wheldon
The truth is that you cannot be memorably funny without at some point raising topics which the rich, the powerful and the complacent would prefer to see left alone.
George Orwell
Epilogue
Very few television shows change the way one looks at the world. Yes Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister, did just that.
By combining accuracy with entertainment and information with humour, the sitcom arrived in 1980 to make the basics of an entire political system comprehensible and interesting to a far broader proportion of the population than the majority of expert commentators, up to that point, had thought possible. When it started, most aspects of how the country was governed were treated as though they were far too complicated, or important, to be subjected to widespread public scrutiny. Yes Minister challenged that conception, and changed it for good.
Suddenly the average voter could see how government and administration interacted, how responsibilities were divided up and distributed, how policies were developed, how decisions were made and how successes and failures were defined, described and defended. Schools, newspapers and television current affairs programmes, as well as political parties, should have been striving to make all of this clear as a matter of public service, but the very courageous decision to do so, and in a way that was genuinely accessible, was actually taken by the makers of a situation comedy.
Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister did more to engage and educate the general public about politics, in thirty-eight short episodes, than most of the so-called ‘serious’ means of enlightenment had done since the age of the great reform acts. Walter Bagehot, writing during that time of cautious and incomplete democratisation, had warned darkly of the dangers of subjecting British politics to the opinions of ‘poor ignorant people’.1 More than a century later, it was left to a humble television situation comedy to attempt to remedy the matter – not by giving plural votes to the enlightened middle-class elite,2 or by urging the many to defer to a special few ‘of conscience and known ability’,3 but rather by actually having the imagination, talent, integrity and, most importantly of all, the respect to educate the masses about how the system really worked.
It made people realise how much more effort went into shutting them out than letting them in. It made them see how much that was wrong was presented as right. It made them appreciate how far short of being their best possible selves so many public servants fall.
It also, of course, made them laugh. It always made them laugh.
It was in large part down to the scripts. There had been some astonishingly gifted writers of sitcoms before Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn teamed up, but none of them, before this pair came along, had managed to craft scripts that were as well researched, wide-ranging and wonderfully funny as this. All of the intricacies of Whitehall could be covered, all of the anxieties of Westminster acknowledged, all of the ambiguities of a constitution that has intrigued, bemused and enraged historians and commentators for centuries captured and conveyed, and, within the same space of just a few minutes, the audience reduced to helpless laughter.
It was also down to the actors – the original actors – who made three representative men seem so distinctively and remarkably real. Unlike lesser performers, who would merely have hidden behind the clever words and served the screen as static stereotypes, this trio of star
s brought sensitivity and subtlety to their portrayals, rooting the interplay of general ideas within the interactions of particular individuals. Crucially, they connected the comedy of the head with the heart.
It also helped the sitcom – even though its two co-creators would not always seem particularly keen on acknowledging the fact – that it was screened and supported by the BBC. A commercial channel would have had the funds, easily, to make a show like Yes Minister. Only the BBC, the channel so cynically maligned and undermined by politicians, had the good taste, and the great faith, and the grand purpose, to actually do so.
There were several digs at the Corporation’s expense during the show’s run (e.g.: SIR HUMPHREY: ‘Does he watch television?’ HACKER: ‘He hasn’t even got a set.’ SIR HUMPHREY: ‘Fine, make him a Governor of the BBC’), but they only served to emphasise what an admirably tolerant, mature and humane home the sitcom had been given. In broadcasting, as in politics, genuine prudence (of the classical kind) seldom begets anything other than cynicism or indifference, but the fact remains that it was a great British public service broadcaster that gave us a great British public service sitcom.
Looking back today on what the programme achieved, there is understandable pride. Antony Jay, when asked what gave him the most satisfaction about the sitcom, said: ‘I think it was the fact that people in the political world all accepted the accuracy of it.’4 Jonathan Lynn, in answer to the same question, remarked similarly but more expansively:
We exaggerated a bit, sometimes, to enhance the comedy, but we told the truth. The public now knows much more about how government works. We found that when we invented things, they had usually happened, or happened subsequently. Most gratifying and astonishing of all, our inventions of ‘Sir Humphrey’ and ‘Yes, Minister’ seem to have entered the language as shorthand for Civil Service obstruction (rightly or wrongly) and absurdity in government. No writer could hope for more.5
Derek Fowlds, the last surviving member of the show’s classic comic triangle, reflected on the sitcom with the same mixture of satisfaction and affection: ‘There were great scripts, great times, great laughs, and two wonderful, wonderful actors, who became two of my best friends in the world. So I thank them. And I miss them.’6
Sydney Lotterby, the producer, was just as warm in his recollections: ‘I feel lucky to be associated with it. I just happened to be around at the right time to do it. And then, with those writers, and those actors – what a delight. It was definitely one of the best shows that I’ve done, and it made such an extraordinary impact.’7
Lord Donoughue, the show’s longest-serving and most significant special adviser, celebrated the programme’s far-reaching achievement:
It was a textbook that was put on television and it reached so many people. Jonathan and Antony were geniuses. Jonathan could spot a comic story so quickly, and Antony was brilliant at writing that kind of Sir Humphrey dialogue. And what they created, with its fundamental and timeless themes, remains just as relevant today as it was back then.8
So much in British politics has changed since that day in 1980 when Yes Minister first appeared on the screen, and yet so much has stayed the same. One of the reasons why we know the latter is that the former happened. As Armando Iannucci put it: ‘It’s a mark of [the show’s] subversive influence that we now cannot trust a politician if he sounds like a character from Yes, Minister or deploys the sort of malformed logic for which the programme was famous. If it’s depressing that this sort of logic is still used, it’s a cause for rejoicing that we now have the means to identify it.’9
The show, it is true, did not change politicians very much. It did not expunge the smog of humbug and hypocrisy that still hovers over the Westminster environment.
There are still far too many politicians – supposedly mature adults – who happily act like novelty nodding, bobbing, barking dogs during Prime Minister’s Questions, and shamelessly duck, dive and dissemble during perfectly reasonable televisual interrogations, and forget that they are in Parliament for reasons of service rather than self-aggrandisement. There are also, quite probably, still far too many civil servants, still secreted far too safely behind the scenes, who, like Sir Humphrey, have undergone complete ‘principlectomies’ and will go to any lengths to keep everyone else standing still.
This mere sitcom did, however, change something. What it changed, significantly, was us. We see through it all so much more easily now, and are so much better briefed to fight back.
It used to be said that we should meekly accept the ‘charmed spectacle’ that our supposed superiors choose to parade in front of us.10 It used to be said that regular public scrutiny of Parliamentary proceedings would ‘debase’ the great debates and ‘trivialise’ the serious affairs.11
Since the evening of Monday, 25 February 1980, we all have a simple rebuttal – perfectly polite but nonetheless perfectly apposite – to such condescending claims. It should be said in a calm but knowing tone: ‘Yes, Minister’.
EPISODE GUIDE
YES MINISTER (BBC2)
Main regular credits: written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn; drawings by Gerald Scarfe; theme music by Ronnie Hazlehurst.
Main regular cast: Paul Eddington (Jim Hacker), Nigel Hawthorne (Sir Humphrey Appleby), Derek Fowlds (Bernard Woolley).
SERIES 1
Open Government (25.02.1980)
With Diana Hoddinott (Annie Hacker), Neil Fitzwiliam (Frank Weisel), John Nettleton (Sir Arnold Robinson), Fraser Kerr, Edward Jewesbury, Norman Mitchell and David Moran.
Produced and directed by Stuart Allen.
The Official Visit (03.03.1980)
With Tenniel Evans (Foreign Secretary), John Savident (Sir ‘Jumbo’ Frederick), Thomas Baptiste, Robert Dougall and Antony Carrick.
Produced and directed by Sydney Lotterby.
The Economy Drive (10.03.1980)
With John Savident (Sir ‘Jumbo’ Frederick), Diana Hoddinott (Annie Hacker), Neil Fitzwiliam (Frank Weisel), Milton Johns, Pat Keen, Patricia Shakesby, William Lawford, Frank Tregear and Norman Tipton.
Produced and directed by Sydney Lotterby.
Big Brother (17.03.1980)
With Diana Hoddinott (Annie Hacker), Neil Fitzwiliam (Frank Weisel), Robert Urquhart, Robert McKenzie, Frederick Jaeger, Andrew Lane, Sheila Ferris and Matthew Roberton.
Produced and directed by Sydney Lotterby.
The Writing on the Wall (24.03.1980)
With Tenniel Evans (Foreign Secretary), John Savident (Sir ‘Jumbo’ Frederick), Neil Fitzwiliam (Frank Weisel) and Daniel Moynihan.
Produced and directed by Sydney Lotterby.
The Right to Know (31.03.1980)
With John Savident (Sir ‘Jumbo’ Frederick), Diana Hoddinott (Annie Hacker), Gerry Cowper, Harriet Reynolds and Roger Elliott.
Produced and directed by Sydney Lotterby.
Jobs for the Boys (07.04.1980)
With Neil Fitzwiliam (Frank Weisel), Richard Vernon (Sir Desmond Glazebrook), Arthur Cox, Richard Davies, Brian Hawksley, John D. Collins and Charles McKeown.
Produced and directed by Sydney Lotterby.
SERIES 2
The Compassionate Society (23.02.1981)
With John Barron, Norman Bird, Rosemary Frankau, Stephen Tate, Arthur Cox, Lindy Alexander and Robert Dougall.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
Doing the Honours (02.03.1981)
With John Pennington (Peter), John Nettleton, Frank Middlemass, William Fox, Margo Johns and Anne Maxwell.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
The Death List (09.03.1981)
With Diana Hoddinott (Annie Hacker), Graeme Garden, Ivor Roberts, Colin McCormack, Michael Keating and Jay Neill.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
The Greasy Pole (16.03.1981)
With Brenda Blethyn, Freddie Earlle, Jerome Willis, Sheila Fay, Geoffrey Toone, Maureen Stevens, Lindy Alexander and Robert Dougall.
Produced and directed by Pe
ter Whitmore.
The Devil You Know (23.03.1981)
With Diana Hoddinott (Annie Hacker) and Arthur Cox.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
The Quality of Life (30.03.1981)
With Richard Vernon, Peter Cellier, Antony Carrick, Zulema Dene, Rex Robinson, Roger Martin and Sue Lawley.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
A Question of Loyalty (06.04.1981)
With John Pennington (Peter), Judy Parfitt, Nigel Stock, Rosemary Williams, Anthony Dawes and John Rolfe.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
SERIES 3
Equal Opportunities (11.11.1982)
With John Nettleton (Sir Arnold Robinson), Diana Hoddinott (Annie), Eleanor Bron, Richard Simpson, Peter Howell, Jeffrey Segal, Donald Pelmear and Talla Hayes.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
The Challenge (18.11.1982)
With John Nettleton (Sir Arnold Robinson), Ian Lavender, Doug Fisher, Stuart Sherwin, Frank Tregear and Ludovic Kennedy.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
The Skeleton in the Cupboard (25.11.1982)
With Ian Lavender, Donald Gee, John Pennington and Rosemary Williams.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
The Moral Dimension (02.12.1982)
With Diana Hoddinott (Annie), Antony Carrick, Vic Tablian, Sam Dastor, Walter Randall and Michael Sharvell-Martin.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
The Bed of Nails (09.12.1982)
With John Nettleton (Sir Arnold Robinson), David Firth, Nigel Stock, Peter Dennis, Robert East and David Rose.
Produced and directed by Peter Whitmore.
The Whisky Priest (16.12.1982)
A Very Courageous Decision Page 38
