The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970) Very British - Satires and grotesques

Our innocent little story begins in a hapless advertising agency with a group of impotents and incompetents. From his beginnings with this lethargic company, Michael Rimmer embarks on a path to ever greater heights. Is a clipboard and total lack of scruples enough for a soaring political career? Now come on! This is just a satire. Though there is no doubt that our hero's compelling rise to become prime minister of the country is at times painfully realistic. He is a child of the new age, a...t home with the tools of mass communication and marketing. And he knows a few things. How to make decisions, for example, in sharp contrast to all those self-defeating buffoons. He then realises he is capable of making decisions instead of others. He is capable of freeing others - everyone - from the excruciating burden of making decisions. He has his ways...
It might be an exaggeration to say our hero is a modern reincarnation of the less sympathetic Shakespearean protagonists, though perhaps only because Richard III and Macbeth would have a lot to learn from him. The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer makes you think: at a time when digitalisation and the online world hasn't even be dreamed of, it depict the mountain-moving power of manipulation. And the fact that simple citizens have no real way of influencing the situation. Michael Rimmer is played by one of the greatest ever English comics, Peter Cook, though here there is nothing funny about him at all. By the end, we fear him. As for what exactly he is - just a clever chap or a villain - that depends on the moral judgement of the esteemed viewer.

In English, with Hungarian subtitles.
The discussions before and after the screenings are conducted in Hungarian.