IMDb > "Yes, Prime Minister" (1986) > Amazon.com reviews

Yes Prime Minister: Grand Design (vhs):

Amazon.com video review: If you liked the early-'80s British comedy Yes Minister, you'll want to follow it to its natural conclusion: Yes, Prime Minister, in which Jim Hacker, onetime Minister for Administrative Affairs, is named (you guessed it) prime minister. Your stiff upper lip will dissolve into a broad grin as you watch Paul Eddington reprise his role as the well-intentioned but somewhat naive Hacker, who is desperately trying to make his mark on the government, yet is constantly running into bureaucratic brick walls. Oscar nominee Nigel Hawthorne returns as Sir Humphrey Appleby (now Cabinet Secretary) and Derek Fowlds is back as Bernard Woolley, Hacker's principal personal secretary, rounding out the superb cast that helped make the first series so brilliantly funny. The finely honed, witty dialogue is first-rate, and no other comedy series on either side of the Atlantic has ever spoofed politics and government as skillfully or as smartly as Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (reputedly Margaret Thatcher's favorite television series). The episodes' plots are convoluted (just like real politics!) and the show is definitely a thinking person's comedy, but the ends tie up neatly in a Seinfeldian manner and the laughs keep things moving at a brisk pace. Finally, a situation comedy for the political cynic in all of us. --Steve Landau