It seems you can’t move for polls these days, everyone’s doing surveys of favourite and least favourite things in every field of entertainment. But the most recent poll brought something new to the mix. This one was about character believability, and usually, when people are asked to name films, books, TV shows and characters that are unrealistic, the field is dominated by science fiction and fantasy, but this poll had a surprising result.
The character voted most unrealistic was the politician Jim Hacker from the classic British comedy series Yes Minister and its sequel Yes Prime Minister, winning by the landslide that all politicians usually dream of.
The caring, concerned minister, later prime minister, who wanted to make Britain a better place for everybody, came top of the poll with a staggering 36% of the votes, more than five times as much as any other candidate. The second place went to Scott Howard, played by Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf, who scored 7% of the vote, with Superman coming in third with 4%.
“It’s the fact of a politician acting, or at least trying to act, for the good of the country as a whole,” poll organiser Fay Voritz explained. “That’s what so many people were saying when they cast their votes. It’s just not believable in this day and age.”
It has been suggested that if the show were to be remade again, the characters of Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby would have to be swapped around, with the idealistic civil servant Hacker still wanting to make Britain a better place reluctantly forced to accede to his minister Sir Humphrey’s demands, and doing the exact opposite. And whereas Sir Humphrey would have uttered the show’s title at the end of each episode with a knowing smile, Hacker would say “yes, minister” with a sigh of resignation.
The show’s writers, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, have been quick to deny any suggestion of a new version.
“When we wrote it back in the 80s,” Lynn explained, “it was as a satire, but reality is too crazy for believable satire to operate nowadays.”
He’s not wrong. When Yes Minister is deemed less realistic than Teen Wolf, he’s not wrong.