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How Not to Rule Britannia
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11862 |
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BOOK WORLD
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8 / 1987 |
2,317 Words |
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John H. Fund
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THE COMPLETE YES MINISTER
The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister by the Right Hon. James Hacker, MP
Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay
Boston: Salem House Publishers
514 pp., $19.95
It is often said that America and Britain are two countries divided by a common language. The differences in humor are also quite marked. The British cherish nothing more than a dry, understated joke often topped with a literary allusion. Americans enjoy their humor a little more direct and pointed, and often not without a few puns.
But despite slight differences in their respective funny bones, each country has appreciated the wit of the other. The computer-generated image of Max Headroom is a popular fixture in American living rooms while U.S. television programs such as "MASH" have been smash hits in Britain.
Now one of the most popular British comedy series of recent years, "Yes, Minister," is being shown on U.S. public television and a book based on the series is here. The Complete Yes Minister traces a year in the life of the fictitious Sir James Hacker.
Sir James is totally inexperienced and his advisers - all old-timers in government - outwit him at every turn. He wants to handle "the key issues of our time," such as open government and "the public's right-to-know." Sir Humphrey Appleby, his unfaithful and scheming Permanent Secretary - the top civil servant advising him - makes certain that change, the enemy of all entrenched bureaucracies, is sidetracked at every turn.
The book is ostensibly the transcription of tapes that Sir James used in creating his diary. The reader is left to his own devices to try to figure out if any given account is (a) what happened, (b) what Hacker believed happened, (c) what Hacker would have liked to have happened, (d) what Hacker wanted others to believe happened, or (e) what Hacker wanted others to believe that he believed happened.
The book, while following the basic outline of the television series scripts, is not a cheap "novelization." The American edition is bound in red with gold trim, and is a handsome coffee-table book. The men who wrote the scripts for the series, Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay, also wrote the book. The chapters - each representing an incident during the service of Sir James - are supplemented by departmental memos between Sir James and other top civil servants, reminiscences by Sir James' colleagues, transcripts of disastrous television interviews, newspaper clippings, candid photographs and editorial comments by Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay, the ostensible compilers of all this material.
Plaudits
Lynn and Jay are old hands at comedy. Jay was a founding member of the British Broadcasting Corporation's nightly news magazine and has been a writer for many programs, including David Frost's bitingly satirical Frost Report. Lynn, who graduated from Cambridge with a law degree, wrote the screenplay for the movie Clue, based on the Parker Brothers board game in which English houseguests become suspects in a
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