• Air date: 10 Nov '03 6 episodes
      Stephen Fry and John Bird star as spin doctors Charles Prentiss and Martin McCabe as they bring the popular and satirical Radio 4 comedy Absolute Power to BBC Two. Stephen as Prentiss and John as McCabe are an unscrupulous pair who run the blue chip PR agency Prentiss McCabe. Dealing with commercial as well as personal PR, their remit covers everything from political communications to celebrity media relations. Their manipulation skills are tested to the full as they frequently find that their work brings them into conflict with political parties, newspaper editors and celebrities.
  • List of Episodes (6)
    • 1. History Man

      10 Nov '03
      Prentiss McCabe client, Nigel Harting, is a celebrated presenter of television history programmes, who specialises in revealing sensational facts. But he has a secret. Newspaper editor, Marcus Payne, has discovered that Nigel plays fast and loose with his sources. A letter in Latin proving that Anne of Cleves was actually a man is an outright fake. Marcus agrees to shelve this career-destroying revelation if Charles can dig up some shocking and rather more tabloid-compatible filth about Nigel's
    • 2. Pope Idol

      17 Nov '03
      Martin and Jamie sense that the world of PR is changing. The profession has developed such a bad reputation that it could do with a bit of spin-doctoring itself. To show that they can make a good impression as well as making money, Prentiss McCabe takes p
    • 3. Tory Women

      24 Nov '03
      How does one go about re-launching a junior shadow spokeswoman who has been marginalised in the Tory party? She referred to her leader as ""pork bum"" and her last ditch attempt to stay in the mainstream of politics is to sponsor a 'Right To Retire' campaig
    • 4. Mr. Fox

      01 Dec '03
      When Health Secretary Simon Wellington wins an injunction preventing newspapers from reporting an incident on Hampstead Heath in which he was allegedly mugged by two men, Charles agrees to help Wellington keep his job. But the survival strategy is threate
    • 5. Country Life

      08 Dec '03
      Successful novelist Roddy Growse orchestrates the appointment of Prentiss McCabe to represent The Real Country Union, a pressure group that has decided to launch itself as a political party. The group is the brain child of Lord Harcourt who in Charles' ju
    • 6. Burn and Crash

      15 Dec '03
      A hugely lucrative golden handcuff deal is jeopardised when one of Charles' most successful clients, the stand-up comedian Alan Boardman, is caught on CCTV camera beating up his girlfriend in the Ikea car park. The strategy Charles proposes to save his career is, even by Prentiss McCabes' shoddy moral standards, as unethical as it is shocking. An apocalyptic end seems inevitable for the sultans of spin. Meanwhile in an attempt to sex up their image, the Tory party have approached Prentiss McCabe