Yes Minister (Seasons 1–3)

Yes Minister (1980–1984) is the BBC's razor-sharp political sitcom you can watch online on iFILM. Freshly appointed minister Jim Hacker arrives eager to reform his department, only to run into an unflappable army of civil servants who are far harder to beat than he imagined.

Hacker, played by Paul Eddington, genuinely believes he's now in charge. In practice the real power sits with Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne), a master of bureaucratic double-talk who can smother any initiative under endless review and sentences that run on for a paragraph. Caught between them is private secretary Bernard, torn between loyalty to his boss and the unwritten code of the Service. Each episode plays like a chess match: the minister pushes a reform, and Whitehall quietly arranges for nothing to change.

Writers Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn drew on real insiders, and the accuracy is what turned the show into a classic — Margaret Thatcher openly named it her favourite, and Sir Humphrey's monologues are quoted to this day. Three series, a shelf of BAFTA awards, and a sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, followed. For anyone who loves cool, clever British satire with not a single gunshot, this is the gold standard. Stream every season of Yes Minister online on iFILM.