Yes Prime Minister

Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister were a pair of related British television series written by Sir Antony Jay (CVO) & Jonathan Lynn, starring Paul Eddington (CBE) as The Right Honourable Prime Minister Jim Hacker (MP, KG, PC), Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne (CBE) as Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby (GCB, KBE, MVO, MA), and Derek Fowlds as Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley (who was my favourite). The series was originally aired between 1980 and 1988.

Prime Minister & Baroness Margaret Hilda Thatcher (LG, OM, PC, FRS) told The Daily Telegraph that "its clearly-observed portrayal of what goes on in the corridors of power has given me hours of pure joy". The smartest person I know once suggested that passing an exam on the lessons of these shows should be required of any high-school graduate who is a citizen of a Westminster parliamentary democracy derivative. In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted by industry professionals, Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were jointly placed ninth.

While the Yes Minister series is not currently available at YouTube, the Yes Prime Minister series is. Since these broadcast windows are often available only for limited time, here then without further ado are the Yes Prime Minister episodes:

1.1  The Grand Design¹ 1.2  The Ministerial Broadcast 1.3  The Smoke Screen 1.4  The Key 1.5  A Real Partnership 1.6  A Victory for Democracy² 1.7  The Bishops Gambit 1.8  One of Us

2.1  Man Overboard 2.2  Official Secrets 2.3  A Diplomatic Incident 2.4  A Conflict of Interest 2.5  Power to the People 2.6  The Patron of the Arts 2.7  The National Education Service 2.8  A Tangled Web

1 ~ The Grand Design is only available on Veoh. 2 ~ A Victory for Democracy is my favourite episode.

My favourite quotes of Sir Humphrey are:

"Yes, there is a real dilemma here, in that while it has been government policy to regard policy as the responsibility of ministers, and administration as the responsibility of officials, the questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the policy of administration and the administration of policy, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts or overlaps with responsibility for the policy for the administration of policy."

and:

"If I am pressed for a straight answer I shall say that, as far as we can see, looking at it by and large, taking one thing with another, in terms of the average of departments, then in the last analysis it is probably true to say that, at the end of the day, you would find, in general terms, that, not to put too fine a point on it, there really was not very much in it one way or the other, as far as one can see, at this stage. Without resorting to crude generalizations or vulgar over-simplifications, in due course, in the fullness of time, at the appropriate juncture, when the moment is ripe, when the requisite procedures have been completed, all things being considered, and making all possible allowances, I shall do my utmost to oblige."