Rent My Dad's the Prime Minister (2003 - 2003)

Children's programme for adults - My Dad's the Prime Minister review by BN

Ace political satire, written by funny men Ian Hislop and Nick Newman.

Made into 2 series, 13 episodes but only Disc 1 seems to be available on CP presently.

Young Joe Prospero competently plays the PMs son Dillon, who finds life in #10 very tedious. He suffers from gross parental neglect (they're both usually too busy to bother with him) and school bullying plus the scorn of his older sister. He retreats frequently into a fantasy world where he imagines interviewing various family members in a Newsnight studio setting whilst they squirm trying to answer his tricky, barbed questions.

Robert Bathurst is wonderful as the sympathetic PM Michael Phillips and Carla Mendonca his wife, a financial whizzkid mother who constantly won't support her husband as expected at functions and conferences. Duncan, the PM's spin doctor, is a hoot, prevaricating throughout - as you imagine they all do.

When Dillon wants info for a school project in episode 6 he secretly rings the Foreign Office for help but unknowingly sets off an international incident. The fallout is hilarious.

"Get on to our man in Bolivia...."

"We don't have a man in Bolivia any more, Sir, he was part of the cutbacks."

"The F.O. used to be the envy of the world, Dobbs, we had a chap in every hotspot from Karachi to Caracas. What do we have now?"

"We have got a man watching CNN on the television in the basement. He's pretty reliable."

I laughed a lot. Give it a go.