The Statesman

The Statesman was a Georgeland television comedy program, airing on the GBC in 1989. The series was a remake of the BBC program ''The New Statesman, starring Rik Mayall. The GBC commissioned a pilot, which has never been aired, and six episodes for one series in 1989. The show was cancelled after one series. The show was written and created by Tony Prentice. Jonathan Simpson played brash, firebrand, ambitious and thorougly amoral Conservative MP Richard Head (a play on 'dickhead'), who tried everything he could to propel himself up from the backbenches. In the show, the Tories were in opposition (in contrast to The New Statesman, where the (British) Conservatives were in power under Margaret Thatcher), leading Head and his meek assistant Brian (Colin Hughes) to lead the charge against the "commies" who were running the government. The show recieved generally positive reviews, but failed to connect with viewers and was not renewed for another series. Prentice used the basic idea of the program to write his own, more successful series, Party Games, in 1994.