A modern revival of an award winning 90s sitcom is as fresh, hilarious and irreverent as ever
30 years on from the BAFTA and EMMY award-winning comedy series first broadcast on Channel 4 in the 1990’s the revival stage show has the same quick wit and topical premise of the original. Bringing together mostly the original cast from screen, tackling modern 24 hour news with the same stuck in the 90s ideals makes for a lot of laughter.
The office is the classic dysfunctional sitcom type – where all the cast are stuck together, whether they like it or not. The behaviour between staff would be more than frowned upon today. The newsroom banter is ‘non PC’ and indicative of the era, very inappropriate but hilarious. Most of the characters would be put through the wringer by HR and promptly fired in this day and age. In this newsroom the HR head, Joy Merryweather, is doling out the office bullying herself, particularly disliking womanizer John, and working on settling her own severance package for when she gets fired.
Robert Duncan playing hapless CEO Gus spouts incomprehensible rubbish to make him self seem smarter. A quote that comes to mind is ‘Negativity is the sperm of failure’ the strangest means nothing statement. He was perfect as the slimy newsroom boss pushing for more controversy. I can only imagine they got the character inspiration from Murdoch, showing how ahead of its time the show was.
John described best as ‘sexual scavenger not predator.’ Was a self confessed ‘changed man’ who even though he had turned his life around from gambling, drinking and womanizing he didn’t think twice about pushing a colleague out of his wheelchair to check he was really disabled. He was a partially reformed character, with a lot of humor that gelled the performance together.
The staging was clever, a screen displaying outraged tweets made it feel like it was GB News or Fox giving it a real modern day relevance.
Following their first disastrous first broadcast, hailed by Gus as only having a ‘few minor teething problems’. Including electrocuting Trevor McDonald and a made up story about David Attenborough committing beastiality. Outrage from the regulators aside, the viewing figures were fantastic and therefore it was a success. The name ‘Truth News’ only made it funnier when all of the news reported was an outright lie to stir controversy. They also touched on the problem of fake news and deep fake generated content.
My favorite cast member has to be Sally Smedley the self professed senior journalist. Her pantsuits, overly posh voice and her lack of self-awareness made for such an over the top character. She wasn’t afraid to ask the tough questions like ‘Should fat people be banned from food banks?’ and ‘slavery, was it really that bad?’. The audience can be heard with a mix of shock and laughter throughout, she played the part perfectly. One tweet described Smedley like ‘hitler in a dress.’ another as a ‘gay icon’. I landed somewhere in the middle of those opinions, her dry whit landed so well and her performance was truly a masterclass in comedic timing.
The cast managed a clean sweep in offending quite literally everybody. Totally intentionally ‘out of touch’ with woke society. You know it’s all tongue in cheek though, and it had the whole audience laughing. The one-liners landed very well, and politics (particularly the Tory party) was a running joke. They included jokes on the current developing situation in Rochdale in regard to the Labour Party. This felt very much like the TV show, where the dialogue changed in real time to fit the latest stories from the day. It gave it a real edge, and I’m betting they’ll keep this going throughout their run on stage. I’m interested in how the show will develop and incorporate future breaking news stories.
Even though I might be on the younger side of the audience members, I found the humour spot on. I am a big satirical comedy fan, and this was political satire at its strongest. I’m definitely diving into YouTube to catch up on the old episodes. This show’s got a new fan in me for sure!