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I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, I Can’t Quite Remember review — Jim Hacker in the culture wars

Barn, Cirencester
Clive Francis as Sir Humphrey Appleby and Christopher Bianchi as Jim Hacker in I'm Sorry, Prime Minister
Clive Francis as Sir Humphrey Appleby and Christopher Bianchi as Jim Hacker in I'm Sorry, Prime Minister
ALEX TABRIZI

★★★☆☆
It’s a measure of how febrile British politics has been in the past few years that Jim Hacker almost begins to look statesmanlike. Who would have thought that the old bumbler from Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister would end up as the master of an Oxford college bearing his name?

Actually, it soon becomes apparent in Jonathan Lynn’s gentle “final chapter” that the former premier’s life is far from blissful. He may enjoy making the occasional speech in the House of Lords, but he is a lonely widower in imminent danger of being ejected from his seat of learning (which turns out to have been founded with a Russian oligarch’s dosh) because he has been caught up in the culture wars. His old