You remind me of no-one I know

The "Yes, Prime Minister" stage play lived up to my expectations. The writers were the same, the actors were completely different, but the important thing was that the piece stayed true to the characters of Jim Hacker, Bernard and Sir Humphrey (while adding a coupla newies, most notably policy advisor Claire Sutton). With the story updated to the present day, the subject matter included concepts like Britain's position in the EU, dealing with a newly oil-rich former Soviet state, terrorism and the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the "News Of The World" phone-hacking scandal, and human trafficking. Tying everything together was the moral dilemma of whether to pander to the illegal sexual proclivities of a visiting foreign politician in order to facilitate a trillion-pound, potentially government-saving trade agreement. That may sound heavier than the polite English sitcom you remember, and I guess in hindsight it was. It didn't feel *too* heavy at the time, however, at least to anyone in our party. Injustices are never funny, but you can still find dark humour in pollies' absurd attempts to justify them from behind a comforting barrier of rhetoric. A tiny minority near us clearly disagreed - sitting stony-faced and refusing to clap at the conclusion.