The lack of subtitles in this DVD makes you listen even more attentively and further appreciate the delightfully funny and witty verbal exchanges in this landmark British political satire. Through its comic tomfoolery, Yes Minister hits the nail on the head by giving us a rare insight into the utterly frustrating bureaucratic red-tapism in a nation’s highest administrative machinery.

 

When Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington) becomes a Cabinet Minister for Administrative Affairs, he has lofty visions of changing the system, cutting through the red tape and being a true representative of the voting public. But then he hasn’t counted on his permanent under-secretary Lord Humphrey (Nigel Hawthorne)! This veteran civil servant treats all ministers as temporary cogs in the wheel and for him Hacker is no different. Withholding crucial information while flooding with useless details, using unintelligible civil service jargon and employing ‘Double-speak’, he masterfully gives a spin to any given situation, making it practically impossible for the minister to do what he wants.

 

The game of one-upmanship is constantly on between these two men and in that ‘politician V/s civil servant’ tussle, Minister’s personal secretary Bernard (Derek Foulds) finds himself questioning his own loyalty and common sense time and again. A few more colourful characters like the minister’s blunt wife and rebellious daughter; his idealistic political advisor Wiesel and a few more hard-boiled bureaucrats then provide further dash to the plots.

 

Eddington’s bumbling minister and Hawthorne’s smooth-talking, cynical civil servant are two great comic characters and it is a joy to watch them try to get better of one another! The most incisive episode in this series is when the Prime Minister’s office has plans to do away with Ministry of Administrative Affairs. Facing the possibility of losing their government chairs, how the minister and the civil servant bury their hatchets and formulate a strategy to wriggle out of that situation is a perfect depiction of ground reality, which says – ‘There are no permanent enemies in politics!”