Yes, Minister/Yes, Prime Minister 2-Pak

Rating:
Summary: Thatcher's Favorite Sitcoms!
Review: Any fan of this series is going to want both these boxed sets eventually, so it is a good idea to get them all at once in this 2-pack. This sitcom was brilliantly written, expertly acted and offered some of the most intelligent dialogue you will ever hear on a sitcom (you could study for your SATs listening to Sir Humphrey and Bernard Woolley--and the minister, to a lesser extent). Who says you need scantily-clad women and off color jokes to make great comedy. Three middle aged men talking government did quite nicely.

The first set includes 21 episodes on four discs with photos on the inside of the case. It also offers a touching 47-minute tribute to Nigel Hawthorne. Anyone who has read Hawthorne's autobio Straight Face will recognize some of the people and places featured in this documentary. The second set offers 17 episodes on three discs including the 1-hour Christmas special "Party Games" aired in 1984 showing the political intrigue leading the way for Jim Hacker to become Prime Minister. This set includes a nice 30-minute tribute to Paul Eddington. Other extras are included in this set.

Rating:
Summary: Thatcher's Favorite Sitcoms!
Review: Any fan of this series is going to want both these boxed sets eventually, so it is a good idea to get them all at once in this 2-pack. This sitcom was brilliantly written, expertly acted and offered some of the most intelligent dialogue you will ever hear on a sitcom (you could study for your SATs listening to Sir Humphrey and Bernard Woolley--and the minister, to a lesser extent). Who says you need scantily-clad women and off color jokes to make great comedy. Three middle aged men talking government did quite nicely.

The first set includes 21 episodes on four discs with photos on the inside of the case. It also offers a touching 47-minute tribute to Nigel Hawthorne. Anyone who has read Hawthorne's autobio Straight Face will recognize some of the people and places featured in this documentary. The second set offers 17 episodes on three discs including the 1-hour Christmas special "Party Games" aired in 1984 showing the political intrigue leading the way for Jim Hacker to become Prime Minister. This set includes a nice 30-minute tribute to Paul Eddington. Other extras are included in this set.

Rating:
Summary: No subtitles
Review: It's amazing that such great series don't include subtitles on the DVD set...

Rating:
Summary: The Government as a Dysfunctional Family Sitcom
Review: This is a HILARIOUS sitcom from Britain from the late 1980's-early 1990's. It is full of very sarcastic, cynical humor between the antagonist bureaucrats against [Prime] Minister Hacker, who is only trying to reform Britain in ways he believes would be improvements. It does take some knowledge/appreciation of government--particularly the British--to fully get the most out of the jokes though. Namely, British ministers are assigned cabinet levels as status symbols, not for any particular background in the field, so they are often at the mercy of the "lifers" that staff the ministry--meanwhile, the former are often due to change within a couple of years at most, so the Secretaries tend to just go around them ayways. Second, the British Parliament is much more closed and secretive than the American government. With these in mind, my two favorite jokes come from the first episode "Open Government" on the original "Yes, Minister" disc:
"There are 2 types of chairs for two types of ministers: the kind that are very rigid but fold up, and the kind that are soft and go round-and-round in circles"
and
"He is trying to create an open government"
"That's proposterous! You can either have 'OPENESS' or you can have 'GOVERNMENT'!"

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and Depressing at the Same Time
Review: When the creators of the show, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynne
came up with the idea for "Yes, Minister" in the 1970's, they
wondered whether a comedy consisting entirely of "elderly men sitting around talking about government" would go over with the viewers. In fact they created one of the greatest comedy programs of all time. Of course, the casting was a major factor, and they had the good luck to come up with such a magnificent cast. What is interesting is that for Nigel Hawthorne (Sir Humphrey Appleby), this was his first real success in the world of acting although he was around 50 years of age at the time, so this program's creators saw the potential in him that so many others missed. It is absolutely amazing how he is able to memorize and recite with a straight face so many unbelievably long and convoluted sentences that are one of the trademarks of this show. Paul Eddington (Jim Hacker) was, on the other hand a well known actor, and he is able to go from being befuddled to well-meaning to conniving in a single episode.
Derek Fowlds (Bernard Wooley-a funny name) is also good as Hacker's personal secretary.
I mention in the title that the program is depressing because one sees how politicians take the public's tax money and use it to pay off other politicians in order to thwart the best interests of those taxpayers. In one of the supplements to the DVD discs there are interviews with real British politicians of the 1970's and 1980's and they say that the program does reflect much of the reality of politics, but it is not quite a cynical as is reflected in the show. In any event, if viewers develop
a better understanding of politics and it motivates them to get involved to keep the politicians on the level, then the world is not getting just entertainment from this series.
There may be some confusion in the program for people who are not British because of the lingo peculiar to British Politics (e.g. repeated references to "Number 10" which means the Prime Minister's Office) or various historical events or personalities in British political history which the viewer may be unaware of.

My favorite line is stated by a character who had been an MP in the House of Commons and was given a peerage so he moved over to the House of Lords. When asked what he thought of the change, he replied "I've gone from the animals to the vegetables!".
Priceless!