Just watched the first episode a few weeks after finishing Yes Prime Minister (which I watched a few months after Yes Minister).
It is really much worse than the original.
This is not the only such example of bad script and bad direction. I remember how in Catkapi the same scriptwriter badly imitated the American series Three's Company which itself was a bad imitation of the British series Man About The House. However Sayin Bakanim is surprising in that the original Yes Minister was broadcasted by the public channel TRT1 in 80s and Paul Eddington even visited Turkey.
Go watch Yes Minister, forget this thing even the directors and the scriptwriter didn't (or were not able to) make any effort to make watchable. You'll see the difference for yourself if you want to.
- Original British series corresponds to the Westminster system of gov't. In Turkey there's no such system, politicians change civil servants and secretaries they work with as they like. Thus there's a mismatch with reality.
- In the original series it's emphasised all the time that Humphrey and Bernard are Oxbridge educated (classics and literature?), whereas Jim is from LSE (still top but not as good as OB), these are mentioned sometimes and given in details such as Balliol College ties of Humphrey. In this Turkish version they made Bernard's Turkish version (Cömert) the dumb one and the minister smarter, there's a dialogue between them about Hamlet which emphasises this. Overall they all seem to be far away from any educational background comparable to the British originals though. This series lack the way Bernard makes remarks about physical impossibilities of analogies Jim gives and there's no comedic element added to replace this.
- We don't see Humphrey's Turkish equivalent (Samim) doing any eloquent dialogue. The smart way Humphrey speaks is one of the attractive elements of Yes Minister. Nigel Hawthorne was such a talent learning all these scripts and delivering them in such a perfect way.
- An episode is 1 hour, things move too slow, they've added narrations to explain things instead of letting the spectator understand the context. They also added flashback in the same episode because they think (?) the spectator cannot remember or make the connection with a past scene.
- There's no real plot from the beginning of the episode to the end, they just take some script from Yes Minister without the context and cut the parts particular to Brits (many of the best parts). Every episode of Yes Minister is going around a story we ask ourselves "How will it be resolved" while watching. No such story in Sayin Bakanim. Just unrelated cuts that are locally supposed to be funny I guess but they don't hold together.
- The way they speak and act doesn't feel sincere and natural despite the fact that these are some of the best actors in Turkey. I remember how Paul Eddington is perfectly natural and it really felt real, not like acting (I really think he deserved a BAFTA prize). Remember in some country (Australia?) Paul Eddington was mistaken for the prime minister of the UK. It seems like the actor in the Turkish version is trying to imitate Eddington without much success rather than living the politician personality in himself.
- I also think Derek Fowlds has done a very good job in Yes Minister, even when Bernard doesn't speak, you can see him in the background attentively listening and making the facial expressions corresponding to his thoughts (those details made me laugh). Here you don't have any such detail in the background.
This is not the only such example of bad script and bad direction. I remember how in Catkapi the same scriptwriter badly imitated the American series Three's Company which itself was a bad imitation of the British series Man About The House. However Sayin Bakanim is surprising in that the original Yes Minister was broadcasted by the public channel TRT1 in 80s and Paul Eddington even visited Turkey.
Go watch Yes Minister, forget this thing even the directors and the scriptwriter didn't (or were not able to) make any effort to make watchable. You'll see the difference for yourself if you want to.
