Dated or Delightful? ‘Yes Minister’
In this installment of Dated or Delightful, we travel back to 1980 to see if a sitcom about the British government can still be funny. Almost forty years ago, the BBC’s Yes Minister debuted in the U.K. Its authenticity was credited to the fact that the writers used real Whitehall moles to give them an insider’s perspective.
Yes Minister was the first program to win the BAFTA for Best Comedy three years in a row. It’s been broadcast in 84 countries across the globe and has landed on countless “favorite/best sitcom” lists over the decades since. But does it hold up over time? Let's find out.
I recall seeing Yes Minister (and quite possibly some episodes of the sequel, Yes Prime Minister with the same core cast) on PBS in the 80. As an American high school student, I’m sure I didn’t grasp the intricacies of the British political system it was mocking, but I knew I was watching something clever and biting.
