The Great Offices of State - BBC Series (2010) [PDTV (XviD)]

Swiped from the box dot bz, thx to the OP

Programme Descriptions (source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qtpj1):

Series in which reporter Michael Cockerell uncovers the secret world of Whitehall, showing what the trio of great offices - Home, Foreign and Treasury - are really like.

Episode 1: The Dark Department (11th February 2010)

In his look at the Home Office - the ministry of law and order, immigration, MI5 and counter-terrorism - Cockerell blends fresh access filming with formerly-unseen and rare archive and interviews with present and past home secretaries and their senior officials.

Cameras follow Alan Johnson from the moment he became the sixth home secretary in twelve years, following the resignation of Jacqui Smith. Johnson is briefed by the Home Office spin doctor about what to say to story-hungry journalists waiting for him. "The Home Office's job is to confront human evil," says one mandarin, "but every person in the pub has his own view of how to do it and is his or her own home secretary."

Episode 2: Palace of Dreams (18th February 2010)

The Foreign Office is the grandest of the three, built in Victorian times to impress foreigners when the British lion still strutted the globe. How the Foreign Office has sought over the years to come to terms with Britain's reduced status in the world makes an often tragicomic tale.

Successive prime ministers have regarded the Foreign Office as temperamentally inclined to kow-tow to foreigners and have sought to be their own foreign secretaries - often with disastrous consequences. The film also explores the always-uneasy relationship between the FO and its offshoot, Britain's spy agency, MI6.

Episode 3: The Secret Treasury (25th February 2010)

The Treasury is the oldest and most secretive of the three. Cockerell's film recounts the many battles Chancellors have fought over the years with their top officials, shows how often the Treasury has been locked in conflict with Number 10, and features candid interviews with the current Chancellor Alastair Darling, many of his predecessors and their normally camera-shy mandarins.

The programme shows how Treasury officials see themselves as the Whitehall elite, brighter and quicker than other civil servants, whereas critics claim they are congenitally cautious and nerdy. Successive prime ministers have sought to combat what they call "the dead hand of the Treasury", but a senior mandarin claims that over the years the Treasury has discovered a hundred different ways of saying no.