TV-PGSynopsis
Yes Minister (1981), Season 2 — seven episodes, watch online on iFILM. A year into the job, Jim Hacker has picked up a few tricks. Not enough.
The season's collisions run sharper. A brand-new hospital turns out to have hundreds of civil servants on staff and zero medical personnel — Hacker wants to fix it. His opposition-era phone conversations, it emerges, were tapped by the very service he now oversees. He tries using honours as leverage to cut departmental budgets, which works until it almost rebounds on him. At one point he seriously considers jumping to a European Commissioner role, and the only thing that stops him is Sir Humphrey deciding that whoever replaces Hacker would be worse — worse for the civil service, specifically.
The finale drops both men before a parliamentary select committee investigating waste in the ministry, and they proceed to protect each other in spectacularly self-serving fashion. Season 2 is where the dynamic stops being setup and becomes machinery. Stream Yes Minister Season 2 online on iFILM.
7 episodes
S2·E1The Compassionate Society
When Jim learns that a brand new hospital still has no medical staff, but hundreds of civil servants working there, he proposes that half of the civil servants be sacked and use the money saved to open wards with medical staff.
S2·E2Doing the Honours
When Jim learns that he can block civil servant’s honours, he blackmails them into cutting their budgets, but when he hears that he might be in line for an honorary degree, he has to back down.
S2·E3The Death List
When Jim learns that when in opposition he was bugged by the secret service, he decides to bring in legislation to kerb the bugging, only to find out that he is on the death list of a group of terrorists, and the best way to find them, is by bugging phone lines.
S2·E4The Greasy Pole
Jim has the chance of creating jobs, and saving a chemical company, when they are offered the chance to manufacture a highly dangerous chemical, but when the news gets out that it might be too dangerous, he has to back down.
S2·E5The Devil You Know
When Jim is betrayed by a Cabinet colleague over his plans to bring in jobs for British workers, he thinks about leaving Westminster and becoming a European Commissioner, But when Sir Humphrey learns who his replacement will be, he tries to change Jim’s mind.
S2·E6The Quality of Life
Sir Humphrey uses Jim’s promise to keep a popular city farm project open to get special permission for an additional nine floors on a proposed skyscraper.
S2·E7A Question of Loyalty
Jim and Sir Humphrey pass the buck to protect each other when they appear before a select committee investigating charges of waste in Hacker’s ministry, until Jim’s higher loyalties are called upon.
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