Yes, Minister

James Hacker: Opposition is all about asking awkward questions.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: And Government is about not answering them!

Just one of the many memorable exchanges between the Minister for Administrative Affairs Jim Hacker (played memorably by Paul Eddington) and his Permanent Under-Secretary of State Sir Humphrey Appleby (played by Nigel Hawthorne). Throw in the Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley (played by Derek Fowlds) and you had an awesome threesome of comedy.

And for the unitiated, this is from the classic 80's comedy sitcome of the venerable BBC - Yes, Minister. A political satire of the first order, it is well written, and resonates very well, even today, even here in the US.

To paraphrase the BBC's own description:

Clever and complex plotting, cracking and convoluted dialogue, accurately drawn observations and top-notch acting all combined to create a Rolls-Royce of a show that ran with the smoothness of that engine and the precision of a ministerial cover-up. Co-writer Jonathan Lynn saw the show in simple terms: a Jeeves-and-Wooster concept wherein 'the servant is cleverer than his master'.

Lets just say it doesn't take much for a show to get established as top-of-the-line. Hey, you know its good when my only exposure to this show was in the mid 80's pre-cable India when the telly was entirely state-owned and controlled.

Jim Hacker the politician veers from his ideas of commitments to his electorate to his ideas of protecting his own hide/seat. And he is either abetted in his ideals to protect his seat or frustrated in his ideals of serving by the electorate by his typically-bureaucratish bureaucrat Humpy Appleby. And though, if they were real people, (and if they were indeed real, my experience with the system in India would attest to the fact that the show wasn't far away from the truth, and India's systems are designed after the British system) I would be hopping mad, now I am just howling in laughter watching these episodes on DVD.

And the dialog writers have unearthed gems of dialog in the shows episodes...

"If people don't know what you're doing, they don't know what you're doing wrong."
"[Citizens of a democracy] have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge means complicity and guilt. Ignorance has a certain...dignity."
"It used to be said there are two kinds of chairs to go with two kinds of Minister. One sort folds up instantly, and the other sort goes round and round in circles."
"I don't want the truth. I just want something I can tell the Parliament!"

There are many many more gems in the 21 episodes of this series. Once I am finished with them I can't wait to get onto the sequel - "Yes, Prime Minister".

All aboard! The comedy train is rumbling!