Yes Minister

Yes Minister is a British satirical television comedy about the workings of a fictional department of the British government; the Department of Administrative Affairs. Much of the humour is derived from the fact that Jim Hacker, despite being the Minister of the DAA is severely limited in his power; indeed, his Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby insists that it is his job to run the Department, and Hacker's is only to provide a public face for it.

Through the course of three seasons of Yes Minister, Hacker establishes himself in the DAA, and then in a Christmas episode "Party Games" succeeds in becoming the Prime Minister, backed by Sir Humphrey and the Civil Service, who believe he will be easily manipulated. A sequel series, Yes Prime Minister ran for a further two series.

Characters

James "Jim" Hacker

After backing the loser in a bid for the leadership of his party (it is deliberately ambiguous and to which one), James Hacker (Paul Eddington) is given the Department of Administrative Affairs after spending around seven years as Shadow Minister of Agriculture. Although considered around tenth highest in the Cabinet, it has a reputation for being a political graveyard, much like the Home Office. Hacker has never worked in government before, and is constantly surprised and frustrated that he holds little real power, and that regardless of his promises made in opposition, all policies tend towards maintaining the status quo thanks to the intervention of his Civil Servants. As the series goes on, he starts to become more politically skilled, and in a small number of episodes, succeeds in outwitting Sir Humphrey.

Sir Humphrey Appleby

The Permanent Secretary of the DAA, Sir Humphrey (Nigel Hawthorne) is arrogant and elitist and considers it his job to run the department on a common ground, regardless of which party is in power or the minister's own policy. He is shown to have little understanding of the world outside his upper-class, grammar-school educated bubble, but believes that what is best for the Civil Service is honestly best for Britain. He constantly lampoons the fact that Hacker has an "inferior" education from London School of Economics (compared to his own degrees in Greek and Latin from Oxford) and generally talks down to Hacker (and often Bernard). A lot of Sir Humphrey's humour comes from the euphemisms he uses when advising the Minister:

• "A controversial decision, Minister" (That'll cost you votes.)
• "A courageous decision, Minister" (That'll cost you the election.)
• "Have you considered all of the implications?" (That's a bad idea.)

Sir Humphrey explained the roles of Bernard Wooley and himself to Jim Hacker in the first episode:

Jim: Who else is in this department?

Sir Humphrey: Well briefly sir I am the Permanent Undersecretary of State known as the Permanent Secretary. Wooley here is your Principle Private Secretary. I too have a Principle Private Secretary, and he is the Principle Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary. Directly responsible to me are ten Deputy Secretaries, eighty-seven Undersecretaries and two hundred and nineteen assistant secretaries. Directly responsible to the Principle Private Secretaries are Plain Private Secretaries. The Prime Minister will be appointing two Parliamentary Undersecretaries and you will be appointing your own Parliamentary Private Secretary.

Jim: Can they all type?

Sir Humphrey: None of us can type Minister, Mrs McKay types, she's the secretary

Sir Humphrey was big on verbosity:

Hacker: When you give your evidence to the Think Tank, are you going to support my view that the civil service is overmanned and feather-bedded, or not? Yes or no? Straight answer!

Sir Humphrey: Well Minister, if you ask me for a straight answer, then 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 final analysis it is probably true to say, that at the end of the day, in general terms, you would probably find that, not to put too fine a point on it, there probably wasn't very much in it one way or the other as far as one can see, at this stage.

Bernard Wooley

Hacker's Private Secretary, Bernard Wooley (Derek Fowlds) is trusted by both Hacker (who is supposed to be loyal to) and Sir Humphrey (who he depends on for his future in the Civil Service). This means that both characters confide in him, and thus the audience. Bernard is shown to be extremely pedantic, pointing out the shortcomings in Sir Humphrey's and Hacker's metaphors. For example, when Hacker announced that the idea was to "cut through red tape with a sledgehammer" he points out that it is not possible to "cut" tape with a sledgehammer. Bernard often acts very childlike; when Hacker insist that an inert compound is one that doesn't "ert", Bernard adds that it "wouldn't ert a fly". However, Humphrey considers him to be a "high flyer" and the novelisations of the series reveal that he eventually becomes head of the Civil Service itself.

Department of Administrative Affairs

The (fictional) department that Hacker leads is the DAA, the Department of Administrative Affairs, whose job it is to help administrate all the other departments and to reduce needless administration and red tape. Ironically, the idea of having a department whose sole purpose is to check up on other departments is itself needless administration. The DAA's unique purpose means that the programme can use ideas for episodes that would normally fall under the jurisdiction of various other ministries, such as the Foreign Office or the Home Office.

Portrayal of the Civil Service

Within the programme, the elected officials and ministers are portrayed as being controlled almost exclusively by the civil servants, who have been in their posts for much longer as they are not elected. The Civil Service is portrayed as being hideously overstaffed and overpaid and resistant to change anything about itself. Virtually all of the civil servants are upper-class with a grammar school/Oxford education but with little real understanding of the common people. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher commented that the portrayal of government was surprisingly accurate.