Having a Tory government has a handful of merits, and one of them is that the vast amount of material on the Tory party from the Thatcher era becomes somewhat relevant again.

 The New Statesman was a late 80s/early 90s ITV comedy which followed the many misdeeds of Alan B’stard MP, played by Rik Mayall, Conservative representative for Haltemprice, purporting to be the most right wing member of the House of Commons.

As B’stard’s name would suggest, the show’s humour was incredibly crude and shallow. The political satire was generally simplistic, merely a vehicle for more irreverent humour. B’stard was the archetypal, straw-man Conservative MP: sleazy, corrupt and totally self-interested. He was written totally as an anti-hero; thoroughly unlikable but surrounded with equally if not more unlikable characters that were largely shallow projections as well – corrupt judges and reactionary peers even more despicable than B’stard.

Though Mayall has a tendency to outshine all others, B'stard was provided with some well-written comic foils: sidekick Piers Fletcher-Dervish (Michael Troughton)  – simple-minded and posh but simultaneously a bumbling figure of conscience – and traditional Churchill Tory Chief Whip Sir Stephen Baxter (John Nettleton).

Unlike its much better known (and largely superior) counterpart Yes Minister, The New Statesman didn’t engage in sophisticated political commentary. Its best writing was reserved for character interactions, where cut-and-thrust banter was the order of the day, but the satire was generally wonderfully absurd, in the vein of Mayall’s other works – Bottom and The Young Ones.

Stereotypes were used mercilessly  – there are scenes with high ranking Conservatives chatting in the foyer of a brothel, dressed only in towels, and an entire episode based around filling an old coal mine in B'stard's Yorkshire constituency with nuclear waste.

Whilst lacking truly engaging satire, The New Statesman was highly entertaining and is worth a watch for a couple of reasons: firstly because it provides an insight into what many people thought of the Conservative party in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and secondly because it’s what a lot of people still think about the Tories now.