Yes Minister Series

International Herald Tribune
Monday, May 2, 1988

"LET'S HEAR A 'YES' FOR JIM HACKER"
By Mary Blume

LONDON-The names of other politicians may come more readily to mind in the heat of the French and American elections, but only Prime Minister Jim Hacker is a regular on television screens in nearly 50 countries, including China.

Hacker, the invention of Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay, began with the decade as they newly appointed Minister of Administrative Affairs in the BBC series "Yes, Minster." The series has won a record number of British awards and a book called "The Complete Yes, Minister" is headed into its third year on the best seller lists. Two volumes of Hacker's "diaries" as prime minister have sold the way votes used to in Chicago.

"Last Christmas we were numbers one, three and four on the lists," Jonathan Lynn says. "I was absolutely furious when Dick Francis got the number two spot."

As his name suggests, Hacker is an amiably opportunistic politician who could belong to any party and whose sayings sometimes strike an uncomfortably familiar chord. "I had to establish whether or not this lie was true," he notes in his diary.

The series is less about politics than about government. Hacker may have influence but he has not power. Power is in the hands of the civil service represented by Hacker's antagonist and occasional accomplice, Sir Humphrey Appleby, whose duty is to keep politicians out of such serious matters as governing and who regards language not as a window into the mind but as a curtain to draw across it. All of Sir Humphrey's motives, as someone remarks, are ulterior.

The series is a study of what paralyzes the process of government. "Somebody once said that the British government has the engine of a lawnmower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce," Jonathan Lynn says.

"The thing which makes the British government grind to a halt is the relationship between the elected representative, Jim Hacker, and his permanent official, Sir Humphrey.

"Politicians are seen by civil servants as squalid, vote-grubbing people who will do anything for short-term political advantage. The politicians see themselves on the other hand as the people's representatives and it is their duty, they would argue, to do what people want. The civil service is obstructive because it is interested in continuity rather than change. The civil service would argue that continuity is essential to protect people from the politicians."

British though the series is, it has had great success abroad, and excerpts from "The Complete Yes, Minister" have been published in a Russian literary magazine prior to publication of the book. Hacker and Appleby, says Lynn, are especially popular in countries that were part of the British Empire.

"It's very popular in India, for example, and I'm told that Robert Mugabe watches it. None of that surprises me because most of the political leaders in today's Commonwealth had some educational contact with Britain, and most of the middle classes probably did. What they make of it in Saudi Arabia or Libya I cannot imagine."

In the United States that program became a surprise hit on Public Broadcast television and "The Complete Yes, Minister" was hailed in The New York Times as "the funniest, wittiest and truest piece of political satire to be published on either side of the Atlantic in the post-Evelyn Waugh era."

An American adaptation of the series called "All in Favor" is under way. "I think Americans are relatively uninformed about the real process of government, just like the British," Lynn says.

"What made 'Yes, Minister' accessible to the public was not politics but government and this series would be about the processes of government that have nothing to do with running for election. They're the same no matter who is elected."

The problem, easily resolved, was to identify the chief road block in American government.

"The answer is the relationship between Congress and the White House," Lynn says. "Because whereas we got to this situation by dreadful historical accident, the American constitution actually created on purpose the doctrine of the separation of powers which insures that the American government will also grind to a halt. And it's for the same reason: A lot of people have the power to say no, to stop things happening. Almost no one has the power to make things happen."

Jonathan Lynn read law at Cambridge and went straight into show business with "Cambridge Circus," a revue featuring future members of the Monty Python gang, in 1964. In addition to writing and acting, he had a three-play season as a director last year at the National Theatre.

Antony Jay is also a Cambridge man ("Yes, Minister" characters tend to be Oxonians) who went into broadcasting and management training films, and wrote such books as "Management and Machiavelli" and "The Householder's Guide to Community Defense Against Bureaucratic Aggression."

Lynn and Jay industriously read all memoirs by politicians and civil servants as they come out and they have as sources several moles. They divide the two main characters between them.

"The way Tony puts it is that ultimately he's the guardian of Sir Humphrey's soul and I'm the guardian of Jim Hacker's. We both of us do a pretty poor job in that respect because they both, I'm afraid, will compromise themselves out of existence when necessary."

If the theme of the series is the immobility of government, the details of how it malfunctions are copious and convincing. Hacker, as a politician, is skilled at not answering questions (one ploy is to reply with another question, another is to say, "That's really two questions" and then fearlessly and honestly to ask yourself two questions you want to answer and answer them). Sir Humphrey knows how to read between the lines: If something is under consideration, he explains, it means we've lost the file. Under active consideration means we're trying to find it

Right now in real life Britain is fighting against standardizing its three-pronged electric plug in conformity with EEC two-pronged plugs. Hacker had an analogous crisis over the Eurosausage, an attempt to standardize the British banger. "Our European enemies, or partners as they are referred to in public," Hacker notes, wish to refer to his favorite breakfast dish as the Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube.

No politician can complain that "Yes, Minister" or "Yes, Prime Minister" cut too close to the bone without admitting the justice of Lynn and Jay's approach. Margaret Thatcher has praised the series in words Sir Humphrey might have chosen: "It's closely observed portrayal of what goes on in the corridors of power has given me hours of pure joy."

Jonathan Lynn is closing a deal on a Beverly Hills house and writing a script for Bette Midler to be produced by the Disney corporation. It's about time to move Hacker up to the House of Lords, but Lynn and Jay aren't quite ready.

"We write about government, not politics, and when he's in the Lords he won't be in government anymore," Lynn says. "So we won't send him to the Lords unless we want to stop writing him forever. It's the equivalent of the Reichenbach Falls in Sherlock Holmes."