Have you ever watched a sitcom that made you feel like it was twisting a knife in your heart and guts while you laughed? It's a weird feeling, and it's one I got from Yes, Minister, a very popular British show from the 1980s. It ran for three seasons, and then the follow-up series Yes, Prime Minister ran for two more.
My friend and fellow author Justin Fraser introduced me to the show, and recently we did an episode of the Wordy Pair Podcast in which we talked especially about the first season. You can listen to that podcast episode here:
This show is hilarious, and often in a bizarre "Oh God No" kind of way. Each episode is another way in which the government of Britain conspires with itself or others to fleece the British people... and it's only gotten worse since the 1980s.
The writing is brilliant, with puns, one-liners, and cheeky arguments. There are whole chunks of the show where the writers seek to say as little as possible in as many words as they can. The plots cleverly fold back into themselves. Rhetorical tricks, backstabs, and half-lies abound.
And the scariest part is that the writers had contacts actually in the government, so once they had finished writing their first drafts, they would check in with those contacts and find out things they could add that would make things funnier and worse, because the things they were adding were true.
The whole series is available for free these days, if you want to watch it. Check it out on Archive here:
https://archive.org/details/s-01-e-07-jobs-for-the-boys/
Highly recommended.
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