Yes, Minister on PBS

The enormously popular British travails of an idealistic official who tries to run his cabinet while civil servants try to run him. Jim Hacker's constant foil as cabinet minister is the scheming Sir Humphrey Appleby, who gets in his way as Hacker tries to prune the civil service, and deal with government wiretapping and a hospital that has a full administrative staff---and no patients. Hacker eventually moved up the ladder, to prime minister, in the follow-up, `Yes, Prime Minister.'