The secret of Yes Minister's success

One of the most interesting stories I found when looking into Yes Minister was that during the filming of the pilot, writer Jonathan Lynn almost came to blows with director Stuart Allen. As with most television productions of the day, the material would be rehearsed at the BBC’s facility in Acton over the course of a week and then performed for a live studio audience on a Friday evening. When he dropped by to see how the cast was getting on, Lynn was horrified to discover that Allen had added all sorts of extra silly jokes, slapstick moments and other ornamentation. Only after Lynn threatened to withdraw the script did the work begin to hew more closely to his and Antony Jay’s conceit. Allen prophesied disaster, but the studio audience howled with laughter and a series was promptly commissioned, but now with Sydney Lotterby calling the shots instead of Stuart Allen.

Yet, on paper, you’d be forgiven for backing Stuart Allen. In a schedule which included On The Buses and Are You Being Served; comedy stars like Kenny Everett, Dick Emery and Benny Hill; and entertainment formats like The Generation Game; Yes Minister seemed brittle, dry and unlikely to appeal to a mass audience. Fair enough, it was on BBC Two, but even so – surely it wouldn’t get two million viewers, let alone the seven or eight that would make it a real success?

Of course, it was a huge success and changed the way British people thought about politics in a profound way, going on to influence whole generations of writers and performers. And – lo and behold! – it utterly beguiled American stand-up comedian Abigoliah Schamaun who had never seen it before. Just what is it doing that makes it so perfectly executed?

Obviously, the performances are immaculate. Nigel Hawthorne’s smooth delivery is the perfect counterpoint to Paul Eddington’s nervy, jumpy Hacker – world’s away from the relaxed complacency of Jerry Leadbetter – and Derek Fowlds has the comedy timing of a saint, helped no doubt by years of having to be the feed to the anarchic Basil Brush. But the language is extraordinary as well, and Jay and Lynn are particularly skilled not just at decorating exposition with arbitrary gags the way lesser writers would, but taking the absurdity of a situation and wrapping idiotic language around it so that the exposition becomes the joke. “It’s the kind of nuclear missile Harrod’s would sell you.”

And of course, it’s fundamentally about status. When a political play of mine was workshopped by some young drama students, I was fascinated to observe that they had no real understanding of the chain of command involved. They imagined that being part of a coalition government (this was in 2012) was like working for a company and reporting to a boss, who possibly reported to another boss. But as I thought about it I realised that a party leader is in multiple different chains of command – party, local party, government machine, Parliament, and possibly even country.

So just as Bertie Wooster is clear that he’s in charge because he pays Jeeves’s wages after all, and Jeeves is clear that he’s in charge because he makes all the decisions after all, so Hacker and Sir Humphrey are both at the top of their respective trees, and each is sure that that makes them the other one’s superior. Grasping for status, losing status, adopting the wrong status – these are all intensely human experiences.

Yes Minister delights us with its complex wordplay, lets us in on the secret ways our country is run, takes us through ingenious plots Wodehouse would be proud of, but ultimately what Stuart Allen couldn’t see is that it’s about what almost all good comedy is about – pride, humiliation, triumph, envy and avarice. All the stuff about government is just window dressing.

For more about how this icon of British comedy came to be, check out the latest episode of All British Comedy Explained wherever podcasts are sold.