Her Majesty's Civil Service - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The BBC television series Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister are a parody of the British civil service and its relationship with government ministers. The portrayal is a caricature of the civil service predominantly characterised through Nigel Hawthorne's Sir Humphrey Appleby. The programme continues to have many legions of loyal fans, including ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Thick Of It is a similar BBC television series that has been called "the 21st century's answer to Yes Minister", first broadcast in 2005. The series portrays a modernised version of the interactions between the Civil Service and the Government (chiefly in the form of special advisors), as well as the media's involvement in the process.

Read more about this topic:  Her Majesty's Civil Service

Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:

    “Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
    —Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    “The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
    —Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

    “The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)