Rik Mayall playing the lead, Tory MP Alan B'stard, is completely brilliant, Shakespeareanly corrupt to the core and loving it.
The New Statesman is apropos right now because we're thinking about Where We Went Wrong. And the Reagan Era and its selfish economics. And over here we have a mixed bag. But over there, in England, Maggie Thatcher's 80's are unequivocaly Class War on Parade. They make no bones about the tax cuts for the deserving aristocracy and cutting the social programs for those miserable poor peasants.
And the grander arguments are all there too. But it's not all muddled like it is here, pretending it is not about the rich getting all the goodies. Or pretending that The Rich Top Ten would ever really include the family that owns 3 dry cleaners.
Love that clarity in Thatcher's Britain, idiotic Tory ideas are panned beautifully in this series. I'm still on Disk 2. But they've already shown up so many of the political games of the plutocrats.
So I do hope you get a chance to see it. The fact that the Reagan-Thatcher glory days were the triumph of the super rich twits at the expense of the masses of us mediocre rabble is satirized to the Nth degrees.
And it includes lots of debate in the House of Lords that is quite relentless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Statesman Netflix has it. Hope I'm not holding on to the only copy. Great writing. Fabulous actors.