Credit: NBC

Government paperwork? Spare us. Government imploding? Oh, now we are listening. And Netflix knows it, because the platform has spent years feeding us political dramas that have cost us sleep on more school nights than we care to admit.

Thinking House of Cards? The Diplomat? One of the usual Netflix political obsessions? Absolutely not. You are about to be proved gloriously wrong because the show stealing the spotlight here is The West Wing.

Aaron Sorkin’s political drama was first released on NBC in September 1999, when “streaming” was not a term in people’s vocabulary, and stayed on air until May 2006. Seven seasons came out of that run, giving us 154 episodes. Mind you, Netflix has brought back all the seasons, by the way, so perhaps do not make the mistake of starting it at midnight unless tomorrow’s a weekend.

At the centre of it all is Martin Sheen as President Josiah Bartlet, a fictional Democratic president who is also a Nobel Prize-winning economist because, sure, running the United States alone would have been a little underwhelming, eh? Allison Janney plays the White House press secretary CJ Cregg; Bradley Whitford is deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman, and Rob Lowe plays speechwriter Sam Seaborn.

The story takes us into Bartlet’s presidency after the election is already done, which means there is no lengthy campaign build-up. His senior staff are trying to keep the whole administration from flying off the rails while Congress turns legislation into a headache. And heaven help them if somebody handles one situation wrong, because that can swallow the entire day. Think the White House press corps is going to let them move on silently? Please. They have questions, and they want answers.

Here, the mere discussion for a vote can make you feel tense. Josh starts worrying about support for some bill you had no reason to care about, and bam, you are invested. Get the votes, man. CJ has her own nightmare waiting at the podium, facing journalists while the administration wishes the problem would just disappear. And before you know, against all logic, government procedure somehow becomes interesting.

Sorkin had already spent time imagining life around the presidency before creating the series. He wrote the 1995 film The American President, and material that did not make it into that screenplay helped feed The West Wing. The show also became famous for those walk-and-talk scenes, where staffers move through White House corridors while holding conversations.

And the awards? Oh, it’s totally ridiculous. The West Wing won 26 Primetime Emmys from 95 nominations and took ‘Outstanding Drama Series’ four years running, from 2000 through 2003. Twenty-six Emmys. Honestly, leave some silverware for everybody else.

Sorkin left the show after season four, and John Wells took over, with the show continuing for three more seasons as Bartlet’s presidency edged towards its conclusion. The later episodes also open up the fight over who gets the keys to the White House next, so the series does not spend seven years running around the same political roundabout.

Look, we know a drama from 1999 does not have Netflix’s shiny-new-thing cover, and that probably explains why it is so easy to skim past. But The West Wing did not collect that reputation by accident. All seven seasons are there now, hiding under your nose, and if political drama is your poison, scrolling past this one would be rude.