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Why is it Yes Minister (no comma) but Yes, Prime Minister (comma)? Grammar would suggest the comma belongs in both titles. Consistency would suggest it belongs in both or neither, but not just in one. --
JackofOz (
talk)
20:40, 9 November 2009 (UTC)reply
Most official source punctuate the two shows that way, for whatever reason ... although on occasion you can find "Yes, Minister" - presumably using the drawing of Big Ben as a sort of ersatz comma in the title screen. -
DavidWBrooks (
talk)
22:17, 9 November 2009 (UTC)reply
Why was the show cancelled?
Is there no information about why there was no third series of Yes, Prime Minister?
I understand that the talk page is not to discuss the topic, but I'm sure this information would be useful to viewers of the page. I have just finished watching the last episode of the second series of Yes, Prime Minister and was surprised that it didn't tie things up, it was just a regular episode, so it seemed like a third series was planned.
Why a show was cancelled (if known) is often part of a Wikipedia article.
I've never seen any sources that state why the series finished, but I suspect it may have been simply that the writers had said all they wanted to say and the actors wanted to go and do other things. I don't think it was "cancelled" by the BBC as such, as it was critically acclaimed and a big ratings success. It's true that there isn't a big finale, but if you're interested in what the characters did next, the three tie-in books (The Complete Yes Minister and the two Complete Yes Prime Minister volumes) detail what happens later in their careers. I think they're still fairly available second-hand on places like Amazon, etc. Bobtalk21:46, 6 April 2011 (UTC)reply
I saw a program about Yes Minister/Prime Minister, with people involved with the show (including the writer I think) talking about it. Paul Eddinton being ill was mentioned, along with him being sat behind a desk towards the end of the show (less of a strain on him). I don't remember is this had anything to do with there not being another series.
Dannman (
talk)
14:52, 30 September 2011 (UTC)reply
Addition of "original research" tag
I noticed
User:Lihaas added an "original research" tag to the "Situation" section. I dislike these boilerplate tags when they've been applied without making the effort to add a clarification on the talk page (especially when this is an FA), so I've removed it. However, I guess he has a point that the section is largely unreferenced. I assume a suitable way for citing this would either be to reference particular episodes to confirm a point, or perhaps the spin-off "Hacker's Diaries"? Bobtalk15:42, 6 April 2011 (UTC)reply
Redadded to the article as there are several section unsourced an dother passage unsourced. In particular the other characetes bit comes off as wholly OR. How on earth did this become FA?
Lihaas (
talk)
12:11, 10 April 2012 (UTC)reply
The "Other Characters" section doesn't seem like the worst part as it is just a fairly simple factual list. "Situation" (still) has a lot of unsourced interpretation which would be far less easy to verify.
Halsteadk (
talk)
12:29, 10 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I have removed the generic boilerplate tag, per my previous post. Please list individual concerns here and myself or other editors will be able to know which parts you feel should be referenced. Incidentally, the "other characters" section wasn't in this bulletpoint style when it passed FA, so it may be wise to revise it back into a paragraph style. Thanks. Bobtalk22:55, 12 June 2012 (UTC)reply
someone add this, please
It says under the section 'Characters' that Sir Humphrey Appleby graduated with a First in Classics from 'Baillie College'. He himself says that he graduated with an Upper Second from Oxford, which is considered the equivalent of a First.
Moitraanak (
talk)13:25, 19 March 2020 (UTC)reply
I don't think this needs to be corrected. In the episode "Earn Your Honors," Appleby claims to have "a first at Oxford." The confusion regarding Seconds may be from a later episode in which Appleby asks whether Oxford grants Lower Seconds, to which Sir Arnold replies that all Oxford seconds should be regarded as Upper Seconds.
I really enjoyed the 2013 revival of Yes, Prime Minister. I'd really like to see the Wikipedia article indicate whether further episodes of the series are in the works or definitely not going to happen. I understand that there were a lot of people that were highly critical of it and I will not be terribly surprised to find that further series will not be commissioned but I'd like to hear one way or the other if this is known. I realize that it may not be known, given that negotiations between the writers and the TV executives could come to an agreement at any time, even after a show is - apparently - dead. Still, if something is known, I'd really like to know, even if it bad news.
Should the fictitious Prime Minister, under whom they all work, (in Yes Minister) be listed as one of the characters?
The fictitious Prime Minister is not only never shown or named, but also is never referred to with a pronoun (other than "P.M.") which results in some awkward dialogue. I assume the reason for this is, referring to the Prime Minister as "she" would imply the show is satirizing Margaret Thatcher specifically, and "he" would imply male chauvinism, refusing to admit that the current real world Prime Minister at the time was a woman. Should a mention of this be added to the "Politics" section?
67.119.15.97 (
talk)
00:59, 11 October 2012 (UTC)reply
No, I think it would be overkill to add material about the never-heard, never-seen PM. The "Politics" section already addresses the series' avoidance of identifying characters with specific political parties, and I think it does the job. --
Hobbes Goodyear (
talk)
01:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)reply
Article issues
This article may still have issues. The "Situation" section is tagged as "original research", and "Other countries" section is unreferenced. Some others may be unreferenced. --
George Ho (
talk)
16:48, 20 August 2014 (UTC)reply
External links modified
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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Official Visit closed with a delete for episode 2 of series 1 for
WP:NOT#PLOT and
WP:NOTABILITY, and I am going through the other ep articles to soft-delete them via redirection for the same reasons. However, some episode articles, while still failing said policies and guidelines, have some trivial (or not so trivial?) real-world information that may be useful elsewhere, e.g. here. I am copying the material here so that editors can decide if it should get incorporated. –
sgeurekat•
c21:27, 28 November 2019 (UTC)reply
The Compassionate Society: Although it was written from the imaginations of Lynn and Jay, they later discovered that "there were six such hospitals (or very large empty wings of hospitals) exactly as we had described them in our episode, notably one in
Cambridgeshire in which there was only one patient: the Matron (head of nursing staff) who had fallen over some scaffolding and broken her leg."[1] There was also a large new hospital at
Derriford near Plymouth which lay unopened for a significant period.citation needed Billy Fraser—the uncompromising Scottish trade unionist who calls the hospital out on strike—is a fictionalised depiction of Jamie Morris, who was the
NUPE shop steward at the Westminster Hospital during the
Winter of Discontent in early 1979.[2]
The Devil You Know (Yes Minister): In his published diary for 22 March 1976, then-Cabinet Minister
Tony Benn records that he has told the outgoing Prime Minister
Harold Wilson that the secret of his resignation had been worked out by the drivers of the Government Car Service when Wilson had made a decision that all former Prime Ministers should get a government car: "Well, the word went round the Government Car Service that the reason you'd done this was because you were going to retire".[3]
The Moral Dimension: The communications room was based on a real incident in
Pakistan. In an interview, co-writer Antony Jay stated: "I can't tell you where, I can't tell you when and I can't tell you who was involved; all I can tell you is that we knew that it had actually happened. That's why it was so funny. We couldn't think up things as funny as the real things that had happened.[4]
The Challenge (Yes Minister):
Armando Iannucci wrote in the Daily Telegraph that "it was in an episode from Series 3 called The Challenge that we saw how the Government succeeds in exerting pressure on the BBC by applying the best twisted logic the executive machine can deliver... If all that seems depressingly relevant, it's easy to forget how revolutionary the programme was when it first went out."[5] The character of Ben Stanley is, in both name and appearance, a thinly veiled reference to
Ken Livingstone, who himself attracted criticism for his
left-wing views and generally being a thorn in the side of Britain's
Conservative government.citation needed
Party Games (Yes Minister) - Real life inspiration: Jim Hacker refers to
Ludovic Kennedy as "Sir Ludovic" before correcting himself.
Margaret Thatcher had vetoed Kennedy's knighthood in the early 1980s. although he did eventually receive a knighthood in 1994 on the recommendation of
John Major.[6]
The Grand Design (Yes, Prime Minister) - Production: As this was the first instalment of Yes, Prime Minister, the opening and end title sequences was updated from the one used in Yes Minister. It was again drawn and animated by
Gerald Scarfe, and unlike the previous series, each episode featured a different cartoon on its title card and only the caricature of Jim Hacker is used at the end credits in instead of all three characters. Starting with this episode, Series One Yes, Minister director
Sydney Lotterby returns as producer and director for the entire run of Yes, Prime Minister. This episode and the third episode
The Smoke Screen are the only episodes that has Scarfe and show composer
Ronnie Hazlehurst near the end of the credits. The following episode
The Ministerial Broadcast and the rest of the entire run of the show, Scarfe's and Hazlehurst's credits comes right after the actors credits.
The Key (Yes, Prime Minister): The Key marks a defining moment in the Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister story arc. Throughout the series, Sir Humphrey has been largely unbeatable, which may have made his character somewhat tedious. In this episode, Sir Humphrey is driven to the lengths of having to break into Number 10 due to Hacker and Woolley standing up to him, and much of the bureaucratic inertia which has been felt throughout the series is lifted. The greater pressures on Sir Humphrey become more recurrent in the remaining Yes, Prime Minister episodes.[7] Real life inspiration: The defining event of the episode, the locking of the internal door between the Cabinet Office and 10 Downing Street, was partly based on reality. The internal connecting door was created in 1963 during renovations to Downing Street, and the new access and proximity to the Prime Minister improved the power of some senior civil servants in the Cabinet Office.[8] Access to the door was periodically restricted. During the
Second Wilson Ministry, on occasions then Cabinet Secretary
Sir John Hunt (whose tenure in office was an inspiration for the character of Sir Humphrey Appleby) was periodically refused immediate access to Downing Street by the Prime Minister's adviser
Bernard Donoughue, who relished taunting Hunt, who was one of the more powerful cabinet secretaries, with this ability to refuse access.[9]
A Victory for Democracy: This episode was inspired by the 1983
Invasion of Grenada by the United States. The name of the fictional St. George's Island derives from
St. George's, the capital of
Grenada.citation needed In addition, the parody of the defence of an island about which many British citizens (including even government ministers) know little, is a reference to events surrounding the
Falklands conflict which had taken place in 1982, just four years prior to the airing of the episode.citation needed The Israeli storyline was based on an incident told to writer Jonathan Lynn by his uncle
Abba Eban, a former Foreign Minister of Israel.citation needed This is the only episode of Yes, Prime Minister that has a different end title of the Jim Hacker caricature drawn and animated by
Gerald Scarfe which portrays him as the British Lion.
One of Us (Yes, Prime Minister): The revelation that a 1960s-era director of MI5 had been a Soviet mole is inspired by suspicions regarding
Roger Hollis, who was director from 1956 to 1965.citation needed In speaking with Jim Hacker, the head of MI5, Sir Geoffrey Hastings makes references to a number of real world spies who had passed information to the Soviet Union deemed more important, and thus rendering the information central to this incident moot, in terms of security. These include:
Burgess,
Maclean, and
Philby (of
The Cambridge Five) as well as
Blake,
Fuchs, and 'The Krogers' (The British names for
Morris Cohen and his wife
Lona Cohen).citation needed
A Diplomatic Incident - Connection to real life events: When the cabinet papers from 1984 were made public in January 2014, it was revealed that a French security officer had smuggled two canisters of high explosive into the French Embassy in London, in advance of a state visit by
President Mitterrand, intending to test whether British security would detect them.[11] The two small containers of high explosive were discovered in the grounds of the Ambassador's residence, and more explosives were discovered in the
Grosvenor House Hotel where the security officer was staying. The British government was infuriated (the incident happened a few days after the
Brighton hotel bombing) but decided not to publicise it.[12]
This post throws into question whether the non-standard credits were indeed aired on the original showing of the first episode, as this article currently claims. (It also provides creative information for the music used on the non-standard version.) I'll leave it to someone more involved with the page to address if possible. --
Nat Gertler (
talk)
13:47, 28 February 2021 (UTC)reply
Thanks for this, I've amended the article in line with the Dirty Feed research (which is by somebody who has access to the original paperwork, so a reliable source.) Bobtalk22:13, 28 February 2021 (UTC)reply
Sir Nigel Hawthorne?
We have this: " . . . his Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by Sir Nigel Hawthorne." Hawthorne wasn't knighted until well after the demise of the show. There must be a Wikipedia policy on this and I do not know what it is, but wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Appleby was played by Nigel Hawthorne?
Cross Reference (
talk)
21:08, 20 November 2022 (UTC)reply
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
I propose that this article,
Yes Minister, be split into three separate articles titled Yes Minister, Yes, Prime Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister (2013 TV series). The reason being: they are three separate programmes with different plot situations, produced years apart, and the three series have enough information to warrant their own separate article.
I'd say it's a good idea to split out the 2013 series, as that really is a completely separate production with an entirely different cast made many years after the original. As for the original series, there are arguments on both sides, but really other than Dorothy Wainwright, new titles and set changes, in terms of production they're essentially a continuation. You'd need to make sure that a sequel series article has something new to say in terms of production changes and so forth as the current article is very much written as an overview of both series. Bobtalk10:26, 7 December 2023 (UTC)reply
As I understand the topic, keeping Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister as one article will be more helpful for readers than splitting them. /
Julle (
talk)
00:55, 16 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Would spin out the 2013 series as non-canonical, and keep the article otherwise intact - agree with bob that the two original series are "essentially a continuation", while Julle is spot on in saying that "one article will be more helpful for readers".
Ceoil (
talk)
02:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)reply