Though nobody can dispute the fact Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s fictional politician Jim Hacker peaked in the ’80s with the original Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister TV shows, he’s enjoyed an agreeable afterlife. In large part that’s thanks to the theatre: a 2010 stage version of Yes, Prime Minister begat a 2013 TV series that relocated the action to coalition Britain.
And now here comes what’s being billed as the final chapter in the saga (and probably will be given the ages of everyone left involved from the first time around). Griff Rhys Jones will play Hacker opposite Clive Francis as Sir Humphry Appleby in a comedy written by Lynn solo. Here a long retired from politics Hacker is master of his own Oxford college. But when the college committee cancels him, he turns to his slippery old ally Sir Humphry to help him mount his fight back. Lynn co-directs with Michael Gyngell.
