Yes, Prime Minister: Re-elected

Britain's most celebrated constitutional comedy,

Yes, Prime Minister, is back.

I don't know what else I don't know, do you know?

The prospect of a new series of Yes, Prime Minister set today

is fantastic.

As Tony Blair would say, "It's very, very,

very good news, ha ha ha ha ha!"

They really do say, "Yes, Prime Minister."

There's a hungry audience out there for it,

and I think it will absolutely chime.

GOLD has enticed the original writers, Jonathan Lynn

and Antony Jay, to write a brand-new series...

I think it's fun.

I really think we're going to enjoy the experience.

..with a brand-new cast...

I love playing the character, because he reminds me

slightly of Boris Johnson.

Am I allowed to say that?

Because Boris Johnson, incredibly shrewd at times.

And I think there's a bit of that in Jim Hacker.

..and some very special guest stars...

Hi, I'm George Clooney! ..because there's never been

a better time to bring back this ground-breaking

tale of political chicanery.

There's a way you can make yourself invulnerable!

Yes, Prime Minister, the sitcom that lifted the lid on

the inner workings of government, is finally making a triumphant

return to our screens after 25 years.

It'll be great to see it coming back and see how they've how

that programme can relate to the changing world of politics

and the changing world of entertainment.

And it will remind Humphrey who's running the country.

It's gonna give us a fresh, fresh light,

and is going to be very, very enjoyable.

It's bound to strike a chord, because people realise it's true.

In fact, it was so true to life that when Yes, Prime Minister

first aired in the '80s, the Iron Lady was most amused.

The odd thing about Yes, Prime Minister is that it was

the favourite programme of Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister.

'Do you watch Yes, Prime Minister?'

Oh!

Yes, I do watch Yes, Prime Minister, but sometimes not when it's on.

It can be videoed for me, or the BBC are very,

very kind and will let me have the tape.

Mrs Thatcher once said to me, "This is not a sitcom, Andrew."

She said, "This is a documentary."

Basically, I think the reason that Mrs Thatcher liked it

was because it was politically correct for her to do so.

It was one of the most popular programmes,

and she was trying to jump on the bandwagon,

as far as I was concerned.

She was inclined, from time to time, to think that only

she was any good, and the rest of her ministers were useless.

And therefore to some extent, this fed into that.

Now, any other points that we wish to raise,

generally, before we go on to the main business?

I didn't like it being associated with her,

because I wasn't wholly sympathetic to her political views

and I didn't want it to put off the rest of the country

or the people who didn't like her.

But I was absolutely in favour of her views,

and I don't think that we've come to an agreement about this.

We've never come to an agreement on that.

I just wanted to make it clear that you didn't have to be a Thatcherite

to like this programme, nor was it projecting a Tory viewpoint...

No, that was... ..which a lot of people

claim that it was.

Although there was one young Tory who disagreed.

In fact, during his uni days, he wrote an essay saying

it wasn't that true to life.

But after two years in power and with a wealth of experience

behind him, Cameron has finally conceded

that yes, Yes, Prime Minister

has got it right.

The fact David Cameron has said that yes, it is basically like that

only really confirms why people love that show as much as they do.

Our new series sees Jim Hacker heading up a crumbling

coalition government whilst battling a catastrophic

euro crisis, financial meltdown, and a bid for Scottish independence.

You can propose as many alternatives as you like in your referendum.

Good.

We will propose only one option in ours.

We're in the age where we have a coalition government

which is increasingly fighting among itself.

We're at a time when politicians don't quite know what to do.

I think you add all these things together, and you see

the re-emergence, the second coming of Sir Humphrey Appleby.

I have caught you red-handed in a devious attempt to inveigle us

into the Eurozone behind my back.

No, well, yes, but...

To explore how Yes, Prime Minister has shaped

our view of government, we've put together our very own

Select Committee for Comedy Analysis.

It consists of Tory titan Michael Heseltine,

former Labour heavyweight Alan Johnson,

Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes,

ex-Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell - or Sir Humphrey to me and you -

and none other than Tony Blair's former Spin Doctor,

Alastair Campbell.

So here we are talking about is this the right time to revive

Yes, Minister when first peace-time

coalition... country in economic

difficulties, euro crisis, Scotland talking about a vote

on independence...

What do you think?

Your party, first time in government for a very long time.

I think it makes for, in theory, a much more interesting set

of programmes even than the original,

because one-party government is interesting enough,

but two-party government, by definition,

is much more interesting, because it's not just the internal management

of your own people, but it's the relationship between the two.

Oh, absolutely.

When I was brought up...

I mean, you described Yes, Minister as a...comedy.

We were taught it as a training video.

You know, this was how you managed your ministers.

I mean, I've been in episodes of Yes, Minister.

You know, when I was at Trade and Industry, and Tony appointed me

and said, "Oh, incidentally, we've changed the name of it -

"it's now the Department of Productivity, Energy..."

which was capital E, small N "..Industry and Science."

PEnIS.

I said, "I'm the Secretary of State for PEnIS!"

And...and this was on a Sunday.

On the Wednesday, I went to see Tony in Number Ten,

and he said, "Are you OK, Alan?

"You know, all this... "pretty straight

nuclear policy...?"

And I said, "I don't like being in the Department of PEnIS."

And he said, "Whose idea was that?"

And he looked round, and, "Oh, not mine!"

It was his Press Secretary!

It was certainly was not!

Alistair had gone by then!

So we had to change, so DTI had come down,

and it was blank outside 1 Victoria Street, I can remember it.

And they were just about to put PEnIS up, and fortunately

I managed to persuade the Prime Minister we'd go back to being DTI.

I mean it's an episode of Yes, Minister.

They couldn't have got, they couldn't have invented that,

could they?

No!

When Jim Hacker left our screens in 1988, Jonathan Lynn hotfooted it

to Hollywood to become an award-winning film director.

Antony Jay swapped the city for the country to continue writing.

Now GOLD has persuaded them to bring Yes, Prime Minister

back to our screens.

It's as good a time as any to revive Yes, Prime Minister.

Nothing has changed, except cosmetically,

since it was first on in 1980.

Our very limited ambition was to write six funny shows

about what happens in Whitehall.

But we stumbled across a rich vein of humour and public interest.

And it was extraordinarily fortunate, but the result of it

is that...there's never a shortage of things to write about.

Collapse of conference, collapse of backbench support,

collapse of coalition, collapse of cabinet, collapse of my career!

This is the biggest disaster since Dunkirk!

It is very much a continuation of the original.

And we've got two absolutely marvellous characters,

er, playing Jim and Humphrey, which I think will be

an eye-opener to people, not that they're better than Paul

and Nigel, but they're different, but they're really very,

very well observed and very funny.

'It's obviously extraordinarily gratifying

'to have created characters 'that seem to have become

part of the vocabulary.

'It didn't occur to us, I think, that we were doing that.'

We didn't set out to change the world, we just set out to...

To amuse an audience.

..to amuse an audience.

Stepping into the Prime Ministerial role of Jim Hacker

is acting legend David Haig, whilst his calculating

Cabinet Secretary, Sir Humphrey, is played by renowned stage

and screen actor, Henry Goodman.

I'm genuinely excited that these scripts have embraced

new and edgy stuff.

Some of the things that happen in these episodes

would not have been in previous episodes

some years ago.

Why didn't you know?

Well, everybody thought that everybody else understood

what was going on.

Nobody wanted to admit that they couldn't make sense of it.

Why couldn't they?

Because it didn't make sense!

The balance between Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker

has evolved through the two of us playing the two roles,

and that necessarily has some differences from our predecessors.

But I think they're exciting differences, and I'm not scared

of Nigel and Paul's performances, which were absolutely phenomenal.

And also, Henry and I have known each other for so long, it's fun

to investigate our own histories, in a way, subliminally, I feel.

Yes, yeah, absolutely.

Within the characters.

Yeah.

How happy is the Prime Minister about his future?

He's as happy as a rat-catcher on a rubbish dump.

The Prime Minister is as happy as an Environmental Health Officer