Cancelling Trident | Yes, Prime Minister | Comedy Greats
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- Опубліковано 13 жов 2024
- Sir Humphrey shows concern at Jim Hacker’s bold new idea to cancel Trident and re-introduce conscription.
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#Comedy #YesPrimeMinister
2020 was indeed "sooner than you think", Sir Humphrey.
And it happen a couple of years before that.
I got goosebumps when he said that.
2020, what a year.
And I don't mean that in a good way.
indeed S-400 missile system
Underrated comment.
Hope the Soviets are celebrating the first anniversary of their Polaris interception platform.
I was coming down here to the comments to say this...
They probably would.
Well yeah, except for a tiny minor issue not even worth mentioning to be honest
@mwfp1987 "can shoot down" yea, and WW2 era AA cannon also can shoot down stuff but i would not bet on that just like i would not bet that S400 can be effective against balistic missles that are moving more than twice as fast as S400 top speed...
A-135 around Moscow is able to shoot it down, but no in large numbers. If I remember correctly it went operational in late 90s.
"We should always tell the press freely and frankly anything... that they could easily find out some other way!"
Comedy gold.
'Many a true word is spoken in jest": Shakespeare.
That entire segment of “probably” seems like a nightmare to learn, but they absolutely nailed it
It’s just talking
@@MKRM27 Memorizing lines.
Whether it's for a 5 minute scene or a 30 minutes episode, it still take effort, hence all of the takes and retakes actors have to do.
Personally, I once created a mere 5 minute PowerPoint slideshow for class presentation.
Spent 1 hour memorizing all of the lines I needed to say for each slide (had to be talking for 5 minutes straight without pause for the presentation), just because the professor was going to dock points off if I needed to read off the slides or use notecards. We were being graded on our presentation as a whole, not just for talking off something we wrote.
My respects to any actors who can nail facial expression, emotional tone of voice, body language and their lines all at the same time.
Listen to the rhythm; that’s how they memorised it. Groups of six :)
It's a well known fact that (Sir) Nigel Hawthorn used to do his tongue twisting speeches in one take. A most marvellous actor who always knew his lines perfectly, no matter how complex they may have been.
You’re probably right
"Have you considered masterful inactivity?" Oh, I LIVE THAT
Sometimes the wisest course of action is to do nothing.
@@Ozymandias83 Can't stand meddlers
Truss should've listened
He actually said "masterly inactivity". I know it's difficult for some people, but do at least try to pay attention to detail - it is rather an important life-skill, after all. 🙄
@@sunnyjim1355 The number of likes suggest I am fine with my hearing and paraphrasing, Sir Humphrey.
The clip cuts off before the equally brilliant exchange in which Sir Humphrey is trying to convince the PM about the virtues of Trident, calling Polaris "a ramshackle old system" while arguing that Britain deserves the best, that Trident is "the nuclear missile Harrod's would sell you" which has to be the single most hilarious line about nuclear weapons ever.
"It costs 15 billion pounds and we don't need it."
--"Well you can say that about anything you buy at Harrod's!"
And for just a moment they brush up against the real reason for nuclear weapons. They haven't been used since the 40s, and though there was a chance of using them against Vietnam in the 50s and Cuba in the 60s, they haven't come that close to being used. You know what they have been repeatedly? Bought. The purpose of almost any weapon NATO countries use isn't to use them in battle, it's to buy them from defense contractors.
The Manhattan Project was the most expensive thing in WWII and nothing costs more than Nukes, their systems, and where to house them.
@@Mourtzouphlos240 Nuclear weapons are used as a deterrent. The whole idea is for them NOT to be used in war (since they can only be used once for very obvious reasons) by making potential enemies afraid to try anything that would lead to their use. At that task, they have proven most effective. There hasn't been a general global superpowers war or even a major regional powers war for the last 75 years. Nobody wants to risk touching off the Big Firework.
Also, nuclear weapons are not purchased from defence contractors. There is no "market" for them. They are produced either directly by the governments of the nuclear states or by public non-profit corporations set up specifically for the purpose of building nuclear weapons, such as Sandia Labs, which have no other function and only one client, which means effectively it's still the state that's manufacturing the bombs.
You also evidently missed the point of the previous scene at the nuclear command centre. The General argues that the UK government haven't put money into the conventional forces because they're too expensive to equip and maintain at presumably World War II troop strength levels for the indefinite future, to which Sir Humphrey observes that the nukes are a lot less expensive on balance: "Much cheaper just to press a button" as he says so dryly.
@@Mourtzouphlos240 Indeed.
And given they have *prevented* conventional war between NATO and others from Warsaw Pact to Russia, *excellent* *value* they have been.
But as logic seems not quite your forte, you can have that set to music by listening to Groundhogs 'Thank Christ for the Bomb' ~ One of the most anti-trend, utterly rational pop songs of all time.
@@babboon5764 excellent value, my arse. The thing that prevented open conventional war between the two blocs of the Cold War has always been the absolute certainty that any such war would lead to the mutualy assured destruction of both blocs even without nukes. Because the loser of that war would be eradicated and the winner would be bankrupted by the expense.
Nukes have only ever been a posturing tool.
It's amazing how this BBC show got so many geopolitical occurrences so right. Brilliant writers.
"By 2020"
Hello from 2021...this joke really was a great potential for the apocalypse memes.
Humphrey gets the best lines
Hacker gets the best laughs, by just saying "what?"
Then why don't I get all the laughs? "What?" Seems to be my most common response in this modern age...
" Humpery, I have been thinking "
" Goood ". Still hilarious!
Perfect political satire in its day, and still amazingly relevant four decades later
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Dont u start grey is the magnolia
Yup. Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minster are two series that never get old no matter when you watch them.
only shows that human nature seems to never truly change. it just takes on new clothes. the faces might be different, the flags are not the same and there are new voices to be heard.. yet in the end, it all feels so familiar
The greatest British sitcom of all time!
No debate!
I submit that you have overqualified that statement. I would suggest that it was the greatest sitcom of all time from any country, and one of the greatest shows of all time, from any genre.
@@redrackham6812 Good luck advancing any sort of logical contention with Johnny Boy
You may as well try and staple fog as try and reason with a poseur of such irrationality..
@@babboon5764 I was just ignoring him.
You mean it was your favourite? That could not be challenged, as it would be your choice to make.
I think we should setup an interdepartmental committee into the possibility of determining what the facts might be. In the fullness of time of course.
"Have you considered masterly inactivity?" Humphrey's such a blast!
This was so close to the reality of how the government back then and even now work it is scary. If anyone needs to see how devious our governments are just watch a season of these fantastic comedies. Great actors and great convincing acting.
The Australians regarded this series as a docu-drama rather than comedy.
The writers had anonymous sources who often let them in on "secret" information regarding the inner workings of the government, which became the storylines of many episodes.
Government was indeed like that back then.
But its gone a long way downhill since.
This and the thick of it are both scarily accurate...
Back when the series first air David Cameron who was then just a university student criticised the show heavily for being unrealistic and demonised the government too much. Only after he join politics and eventually claw his way to become prime minister he realised how painfully realistic the show is.
A rare 2-hander of complex lines. Not just Humphrey but Hacker in there too, perfectly delivered with a rhythm that you can feel. 2 actors working their socks off.
Timeless brilliance from both Eddington and Hawthorne.
Beyond awesome -- and lines delivered straight-faced, at a lightning pace and without breaking character in the tiniest degree. I wonder whether the cheering audience reaction might indicate that this was about the sixth take, after numerous others went wrong. This is pure speculation, but such things have been known to happen.
@@dizzyology7514 I've only ever been able to find three - perhaps four bloopers for this show.
1 coud not agree more
You have to ask how long it took them to get their lines right for this segment; the delivery is just sublime!
"Yes, but even then they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that although you probably wouldn't there's no probability that you certainly would!"
"...what?"
An explanation of how nuclear deterrent works
Thank you. That makes much more sense in writing.
The most intelligent, hilarious and relevant comedy of all time!
Its up there in the top 2 I forgot how funny and satirical its was and relivent even today more so now
The entire point of the series is how resistant to change the permanent bureaucracy is. That makes this series relevant in the 1980s, today, going forward into the 2080s as well as back in the 1880s, 1780s, etc.
I always found Jim's "what?" at the end far funnier than Humphrey's long vehement speech full of circumlocutions.
So take it apart and work out how & why that worked.
Seems to me you're arguing in favour of the handlebars but not wheels on a bicycle.
@@Farweasel That is a fairly condescending comment indeed. It is the delivery of "what?" by Eddington that made it comically poignant. The script-writer had simply written the word "what?" and it was up to the actor as to how he decided to deliver it. And he did it superbly. Notice how he acts with his entire face first and then his entire body, with his glance darting here and there, to let the confusion manifest in his person. He could have simply sat there and said "what?". People would have still laughed perhaps. But it would have hardly been the same. Your bicycle metaphor does not fit here simply because I do not see Eddington's delivery's success being entirely dependent on Hawthorne's earlier speech. Hawthorne, in my opinoin, did poorly in this anyway. He looks way too animated - eyes bulging, body moving awkwardly - which takes away the realism altogether. I do not mind the realism being absent altogether as it can still be quite funny. The only problem is that then it would be inconsistent because in other places Appleby is very realistic and serious.
@@meusha846 WHAT?
@@meusha846 I concur as to Paul Eddington's brilliance, but the degree of payoff came from Nigel Hawthorne's setup. A comic dialogue is a dance of partners, and in the best ones the partners make each other better.
Just a perfect summary of the absurdity of the deterrent argument
Sir Humphrey is all for _activity_ as long as it's not the _politicians_ who are active.
firm _masterly inactivity_ ; think he would be fine with that for the rest of his career
Did Humphrey predict that 2020 would be an appalling year? Cuz it was….
Appalling.. isn't it?
I can't think of another word! Can u Bernard?
@@jkolorath I'm appalled.
@@jkolorath How about..... Ghastly?
Have I missed something?
@@babboon5764 Yeah! Jut like the above contributors, you missed 2021, by the looks of it.
I just love it when Jim Hacker reacts with a confused WHAT after Sir Humphrey has intellectually and verbosely rambled on and on. He just defeats that purpose altogether.
So good 🤣 British comedy at its best, pity there's bugger all to match it nowadays.
Thank omg for that
Satire not alive at all on TV.
This is one of the best TV shows in human history.
In any animal's history, in fact.
@@renejean2523 Pah! Mear supposition. How much non-human TV have you watched? Come on, confess.
@@Farweasel - lol Almost none. Am I prejudging do you think?
@@Farweasel I have cats, so I've watched plenty of videos of squirrels and birds. I've also watched The Lion King, The Land Before Time, Ice Age, and Happy Feet. This beats any of them.
I love that he says "Two thousand and twenty", rather than "twenty twenty"
"Stuff the affairs of the nation, I want a cook." - Jim Hacker
The acting and the dialogue in Yes Minister is just superb!
So brilliant, and still absolutely up to date...
2020 is sooner than you think! I’d almost forgotten how worried we all were back then of the USSR
Eh, they're about to invade The Ukraine, so it looks like we're going back to the 70's.
Well they were right to be worried
Turns out they were just as scared of us as we were of them.
Paul Eddington is a legend, the guy doesn't even have to say anything that funny and he still makes you laugh, he makes you chuckle just thinking of him. May he rest in peace.
It's aged very well because it proves politics hasn't changed lol 😆
As of this week, trident doesn't work anyway. Lol
How they managed to keep straight faces the entire time is beyond me
I think they edited out the parts where they cracked up.
Always a joy to see it pop on my feed! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
"Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that, although you probably wouldn't, there's no probability that you certainly would!"........"What?" - brilliant! 🤣
I remember watching that back in the day, I probably appreciate it more now though.
2:28 - "Yes, but that's about all!!" Humphrey's mask slips to reveal that he is actually quite mad. A facet that Hawthorne brought rather brilliantly to the character.
Well, with MAD Doctrine - mutually assured destruction - 5 nuclear weapons is utterly laughable as a deterrent, especially against a state that spans a continent like the USSR, as the response - that being the entire Soviet arsenal - would have utterly glassed all of the UK, while the soviets by comparison had at worst a flesh wound.
So in this context, Humphrey is s indeed correct. You are either in the nuclear game, or you aren't. Hacker is wanting it both ways, which won't work.
to be fair destroying a few cities is nothing compared to destroying most cities.
conventional bombs during WW2 probably did far far more damage to Germany than 5 nukes would have.
@@AFGuidesHD Perhaps. But that also took at the very best months to achieve. And that was assuming that the bombs hit anywhere close to their intended targets. An 'on target's bomb during WWII would still likely land as much as 500 feet from where it should have. Hence one of the reasons bombing raids required hundreds of planes dropping thousands of bombs, to make sure enough of them hit their mark. Put simply, WWII Bombing campaigns were an exercise in "throw enough shit at the wall and some of it is going to stick."
In a nuclear exchange, the 'fighting' is over and done with Ina few hours, and the area of effect means you only need to go off inside the city limits to take out the whole city. Then the radioactive fallout denies the enemy access to the location for years after before they can rebuild.
@@K9TheFirst1 The reality is that most Bomber Command raids in World War II were area raids as the average bomb aimer would be lucky to be within 100 to 300 yards when some bomber crews bombed the wrong city.
They relied on using large bombs such as the 12,000 lb blast bomb to dehouse and also increased the number of incendiary devices carried on the raids to start large fires that would overwhelm the local fire services.
Yet for all of the waste involved in that campaign, the cost and the number of lives lost the Allied bombing campaign against Germany consumed some 1,415,745 tons of bombs and if you take into account the divison of bombing and assume a roughly 85% average share for the RAF that accounts to 1,203,383 tonnes of bombs. yet explosive power is not related to bomb weight as the casing has to be taken into account so if you are generous and take a factor of 90% explosive content which is dreadfully inaccurate for the early bombs like the 500lb bomb and closer to the 12,000 lb blast bomb then you are left with a figure of just over 1.08 million tonnes of explosive dropped.
Against which you have to quantify bombs that did not explode due to fuse failure, were disarmed by the Germans or which entered the ground too deeply to detonate so takinge a 10% failure rate off of that and you are sub 1 million tonnes of effective explosive power.
Little Boy detonated at a figure of around 16 kilotonnes of TNT which suggests that terms of nuclear bombing a saturated bombing campaign using conventional weapons was more suitable in terms of a visible and permanent result as Little Boy achieved an efficiency that was a very low 1.7% of the fissionable material contained within the bomb, had the bomb reached around 20% efficiency then the yield could have reached a figure closer to 34 kilotonnes of TNT.
Although Little Boy exploded with the energy equivalent of 16,000 tons of TNT, the Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that the same blast and fire effect could have been caused by 2,100 tons of conventional bombs: "220 B-29s carrying 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs, 400 tons of high-explosive bombs, and 500 tons of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs."
The bottom line is that to have reached the amount of TNT equivalent dropped on Germany you would have needed 61 atomic devices the size of Little Boy and that would have irradiated most of Western Europe in the process.
Sooner thank 2020, Russian S400 was ready by 2015. This show is timeless, kudos to the legendary writers... 🙏
S-500 system is rolling out to operational battalions now
Not working too well for them at the moment.
it can't stop Soviet Era Ukraine fighters
@@MightyJosh1985 Ukraine cannot win the war and the longer the nazi clown comedian puppet actor is in power, the west will prolong it for the causalities to maximize and to buy more time for the later acts. If you believe what you see on news, you've been fooled.
@@MightyJosh1985 When's the last time the Ukrs flew a sortie?
Fabulous series. So cleverly written.
2:09
"The soviets will develop it by 2020"
Really makes you think about the time this show was actually aired
So much golden cinema in one show, hard to believe this was made in the early 1980s....
This is one of my top moments of the entire series. Brilliant.
Brilliant acting and scriptwriting.
Well put dont need to analyse it just funny
What another amazing funny yes Prime mister clip
2020 was indeed sooner than we thought
It was a year ago, if that's what you mean.
Why is this show so effing brilliant!!!
They have developed it before 2021 to be fair
On the other hand, where is the Soviet Union?
With Lenin and Stalin.
So it was 'sooner than you think'...
@@dclark142002 Minister, one must always assume the deadline shall be broken. But you have to always ensure said deadline be before the end of one's term, less you do not make it in the relection.
"2020, but that's sooner than you think"
God you're telling me
I love the occasional scenes when Sir Humphrey loses his cool!
"How about masterly inactivity?"
Interestingly it was British India's Afghan policy after the debacle of 1st Anglo-Afghan War in 19th century.
Make one wonder what would south Asian security situation look like, if the west had continued that policy, while the current Afghan debacle still unfolding.🤔
Sir Humphreys prophecy was very good only one year early!
Rishi Sunak trying to reinstate national service be like:
Man, this is brilliant!!
Absolute GEM!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Excellent! Both script and acting are superb.
This is such an intelligent comedy.
I hope intelligent comedies like this return.
Brilliant scene from a brilliant show.
Sir Humphrey was prophetic. S400s and now S500s. No Soviets though, just Russia. And hypersonics also.
The S systems are non-nuclear anti-aircraft missiles. The hypersonics are still in development, and the US has been developing their own version as well as counter-measures. Putin's hypersonics are a load of sonic-hype, intended to frighten the western public in the hopes that it will help him get his way with Ukraine as well as the other former Soviet republics. Maybe not entirely bluff, but certainly 100% bluster.
How well are they working in Ukraine?
We now all know Russia is just a paper tiger. And the few hypersonic missiles they did have we gone before you knew it
@@MightyJosh1985 they are working well actually.
@@Blake4014 tell that to the Russian losses families
The nuclear weapons that Harrods would sell! 🤣
It's incredible and humbling to think that by this time, Paul Eddington was suffering acute cancer and yet he was so selfless, he didn't give away an inch to deliver wonderful comedy.
Now, that's what you call, a legend!
They bring up 2020 and it was the year of hell
great comic acting from two of the greats of British tv
Best ever!!!
An absolute classic.
Lol Rishi here trying to institute conscription? Perfect timing this gets recommended to me
This is better than any comedy TV I've seen in years. No idea this even existed
Where have you been to miss this
excellent banter
One of television's greatest exchanges.
Now,this "what?",Prime Minister,is stollen right from my mouth!!!
2020 that's sooner than you think
That 2020 joke aged like a very fine wine.
This is legendary
Simply genius 👏
'enough to obliterate Moscow Leningrad Minsk' not sure if the writers were aware but the actual discussions about targeting were similar. The UK had a so called 'Moscow criterion' at the time ie at a minimum Moscow had to go. In fact talks constantly revised the proposed target list '10,20, 30, options with or without Moscow'. There was also a lot of discussion about megadeaths. It was generally agreed a minimum of 20 million ie Moscow Leningrad Minsk might just about cover it or close enough.
The writers had secret contacts inside government. Information provided through the back channels anchored the show in reality. That is one of the reasons it works so well.
Superb writing - I wonder how many takes were needed to get that!
Masterly inactivity is my new favourite phrase
This was the vastly superior predecessor to "The Thick of It" which looks like it was written by morons by comparison as great works often do when other try to imitate them.
Brilliant
"The nuclear missle Harrod's would sell you."
Those last few lines are brilliant, a level of comedy writing we just don't see any more.
Missed the end when they talk about Trident and Harrods analogy.
This classic shares the "Comedy Great" mantle with Citizen Khan, according to this UA-cam channel. It'd take more than a whole ministry of Sir Humphreys to convince me of that.
I have got movie DVDS of Paul Uddingston with Christopher Lee and Charles Gray in The Devil Rides Out and Nigel Hawthorn with Clint Eastwood and Freddy Jones in Firefox as I am dedicating this movie DVDS to my old school friends who are both sisters as I hope to see them again very soon
to Chris and Hester from Billyxxxxx
Never gets old, as relevant now as it was then...
Incredible writing and acting.
"By 2020, but that is sooner than you think" That was last year by my reckoning.
Make that man PM NOW he talks total sense 🙋♂️🙋♂️🙋♂️🙋♂️
Humphrey had already asked " you're not a secret unilateralist?" To the PM Back when the PM was a minister
How about masterly inactivity? No Humphrey, I have decided to be firm. Ok. How about firm masterly inacitivity?
Comic genius
2020. It’s sooner than you think.
Utter genius. They don't write stuff like this anymore.
Well, it's rather difficult to understand.
this is from an era when our culture still had intellectual values and cherished the integrity of being intelligent and educated. whereas in modern day, it's nearly as if everything is just lowbrow and trashy. quick and primal stimulations through the internet, social media and shortform content (tiktok, etc), perfectly thoughtless for quick sensory triggers and easy consumption. like the rats in Olds-Milner chamber waisting their lives compulsively pressing that lever over, and over, and over again for those quick serotonin releases.
comedy is a spectrum, on one end you have the clowns, on the other end intelligent and elegant satire. yet, in this day and age itseems as most of entertainment media has gone full pedal into the circus
@@merlith4650 ....this show aired the same years that the US soap opera Dallas was the most watched tv show in the UK and the biggest broadcast was reshowing Live and Let Live. Very intellectual, not low brow at all. The Rick and Morty of intellectual consumerism of its day.
It should be a pretty straightforward thing. If something is known by pretty much everyone as being an ineffective product, don't spend money on it, right? 🤔
One of humankind’s creations you wish wouldn’t disappear with it.
One of the funniest sketches of all time, its up there with biggus dickus.
Ah, when 2020 had less sinister expectations , like a Polaris defence shield. Good Times, good times.
The total cost of the Trident program came to $39 billion in 2011, with a cost of $70 million per missile.
I shall be firm !!
How on Earth did they learn these lines? In the same way that people ask what was the good of the moon landings, i used to ask what is the good of puting on Shakespears plays - but now i see.
Never heard M.A.D. summed up so well