s happen as a matter of turn:“Minister! It takes time to do things!”This plays on the fact that because so many people in the Services are caught up doing useless things or are so slow and lazy, it takes a long time to achieve anything major. Jim Hacker mentions Alexander the Great ruling at a very young age, and Sir Humphrey remarks that Alexander the Great would have been a very bad civil servant.Two kinds of people are particularly characterised in Yes Minister. The first is Sir Humphrey, a sexist chauvinistic male. Sir Humphrey is particularly attacked in this episode of Yes Minister because his attitudes and opinions are the type that make Equal Employment Opportunities an issue in the first place.The second is Hacker who is only concerned with personal success and achievements. He wants people to look at his life and say, ‘Wow, that guy was amazing… look what he did.’ The only time principles came into play was where it could help him benefit somehow:“‘You mean you are actually going to do something out of pure principles?’‘Yes, principles make good vote winners.’”The three main characters James (or Jim) Hacker MP, Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Wooley are in each of the episodes of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. Since most of the script and viewing time is devoted to them they have been carefully selected for the roles. They act out the script making it spring alive, working as a team to achieve the desired outcome: humour.Although the program is not as relevant to today’s society as it was when it was first released, many of the issues still hold true. When it was first released Yes Minister was an extremely bold satire as the issues of Equal Employment Opportunity were still relatively unmentioned. Now, in the 90’s there has been much focus on Equal Employment Opportunity and women’s rights and gradually women have been gaining an equal ...
