What is Yes Minister's IQ Score?

Yes Minister has an IQ Score of 163/200 on TV Intelligentsia's Intelligence Quotient framework, placing it in the Masterclass tier. The score breaks down to 41/50 Cognitive Stimulation, 42/50 Educational Value, and 39/50 Craft & Quality.

Is Yes Minister educational?

Yes Minister is strong on educational value, 42/50 on TVI's rubric, which covers academic content, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, life skills, and knowledge transfer.

How does TV Intelligentsia calculate IQ Score?

TV Intelligentsia's IQ Score is calculated as round((Cognitive Stimulation × 0.4 + Educational Value × 0.35 + Craft & Quality × 0.25) × 4), scoring titles from 0 to 200 across five tiers: Masterclass (≥160), Stimulating (≥130), Competent (≥100), Passive (≥70), and Numbing (<70). The framework is published at tvintelligentsia.com/methodology/.

Yes Minister , IQ Score 163/200

Yes Minister has an IQ Score of 163/200 on TV Intelligentsia's Intelligence Quotient rubric, placing it in the Masterclass tier.

By Jordan Robinson, MD, MPH·Updated 2026-06-17·Methodology

comedypoliticalsatire

163/ 200

Masterclass

Measurably increases domain knowledge or cognitive capacity

Score Breakdown

Cognitive Stimulation/50

Educational Value/50

Craft & Quality/50

IQ = round((Cognitive × 0.4 + Educational × 0.35 + Craft × 0.25) × 4) · How we score →

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Why you should trust this score

Scored under Jordan Robinson, MD, MPH

Physician and founding editor. Maintains the adult catalog against the published rubric and reviews the rubric application.

Methodology

Published rubric, v1.2

Formula

round(C × 0.40 + E × 0.35 + Q × 0.25) × 4

Database scale

2,338 titles, version-controlled

How we stay independent. We accept no studio money. We pay for our own streaming subscriptions. Our reviewers see no sponsor data, no affiliate revenue, and no screener access in exchange for coverage. More about how we work →

The TVI Take

Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn's 1980-84 BBC sitcom about the relationship between newly-appointed Minister Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington) and his career-civil-servant Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne). The structural commitment to letting Whitehall-bureaucratic-cognition be the show's actual subject, institutional capture, civil-service-vs-elected-official tension, the architecture of policy generation, was so accurate Margaret Thatcher cited it as documentary.

Required viewing for understanding parliamentary democracy.

Where to Watch

Stream