As it’s thirty-odd years since this sharp, satirical TV sit-com began the first of its six seasons, I did wonder whether it might have lost its cutting edge. In 1990 personal computers were comparatively unusual, mobile phones were bulky rather than smart and not all news came via the Internet, so the game of communication  hadn’t quite morphed into the minefield of  potential misinformation we navigate daily. I needn’t have worried, however – as one character proudly declares, GlobeLink News was creating fake news before there was fake news, and even years after the company closed down, its newly re-united staff can still rise to the challenge of concocting newsworthy reports (Prime Minister shoots pangolin – or possibly hedgehog) to suit public, sponsor and their own (dubious) principles. Only they can’t, of course, especially as the agenda of their new enterprise is far from clear, their most sensationalist roving reporter is confined to a wheelchair, the rest of the staff are unpaid trainees and the voice-activated coffee machine won’t listen. Along with two new characters (plus a selfless on-screen guest appearance from Sir Trevor McDonald) seven of the original cast appear here, their clashing personalities undimmed (whatever they may claim) and their comic interaction honed to perfection. Inevitably, the appearance of each one was greeted by a wave of adulatory applause from an audience of loyal fans who clearly wouldn’t have wanted any radical changes (and Victoria Wicks, as egocentric newsreader Sally Smedley, really must have a portrait in her attic, to account for her timeless appearance. Dimbles the teddy-bear had aged well too) But nostalgia for the original was still spiced up by a sharp, dark script with a range of up-to-the-minute political references – notoriously, when the original TV series was being filmed scripts would be updated at the last possible minute in order to reflect real events. The curtain-call was rapturous, and (nostalgia sometimes being exactly the right mode at the right moment) it was touching that it included large images of Haydn Gwynne and David Swift, the two cast members no longer with us.

Gail-Nina Anderson