The worldโs in a mess what with war, climate change and political upheaval, and the truth, itโs true, has taken a battering of late.
What better time then for the launch of a new TV news service, Truth News, fearless ferreter out of the facts?
Whatever the response of the fictional viewing public, there was a real and very warm reception at the Theatre Royal for the cast of this belated stage spin-off of Drop the Dead Donkey.
The sitcom was much loved in the 1990s as a sharp satire on TV journalism with its egos, rows, cock-ups and outrageous hypocrisy (none of it really true to life – surely?).
And now itโs back, the characters revived by writers Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin and the actors who played them on TV โ all longer in the tooth, naturally, and (the characters, that is) trailing more baggage than a hen party.
On comes Jeff Rawle as George Dent, the editor who was never wholly in control, summoned mysteriously to this high rise office to be outsmarted by a coffee machine.
Then in sidles Neil Pearsonโs Dave Charnley, remembered as the floppy-haired newsroom lothario and gambling addict, followed by Ingrid Laceyโs Helen Cooper, a lesbian when to be so made you a fair butt of jokes.
In rolls a wheelchair-bound (oh, yeah!) Damien Day, Stephen Tompkinsonโs frontline newshound whose legendary pursuit of tear-jerking footage knew no bounds. Has maturity brought him a conscience?
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Oh, God, they moan collectively, all it needs now is for news reading diva Sally Smedley (Victoria Wicks) and inaptly named Joy Merryweather from HR (Susannah Doyle) to turn upโฆ and suddenly they do, each greeted with applause from out in the dark.
And with unsatisfactory answers to their understandable questions โ โWhoโs funding this?โ being one โ in comes Gus Hedges (Robert Duncan), shark-like corporate smile undimmed by time.
Thereโs a plot, with Julia Hillโs hotshot recruit Mairead (armed with an Emmy in her handbag) at the heart of it, and thereโs a young person, brave Kerena Jagpal as intern Rita, introduced by Gus as โthe weather girlโฆ er, personโ and told that โthe algorithmโ isnโt keen on her top.
Itโs unspoken but something more revealing, you deduce, would do the trick.
Truth News, itโs soon pretty obvious, isnโt long for this world, which has moved on since the days when coffee machines werenโt smarter than humans and algorithms didnโt relegate editors like George to bit-part roles.
The fun partly derives from references to todayโs news agenda. Rishi Sunak probably doesnโt need the royalty that he perhaps deserves.
But much more from seeing a bunch of dinosaurs negotiating a world full of technological and attitudinal strangeness. Theyโre all at sea and we in the audience, mostly of a similar generation, laugh in gleeful recognition.
โAI,โ smarms Gus to his uncomprehending news team, โis delivering mankind from the tyranny of thinking.โ
But itโs time-honoured โtechnical difficultiesโ that do for Truth News in the end. Oh, and electrocuting a national treasure live on air!ย
The show ends, poignantly, with a visual tribute to the two cast members no longer with us โ David Swift, who played newsreader Henry Davenport, and Haydn Gwynn who was Alex Pates, Georgeโs deputy, in series one and two.
Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening! runs until Saturday, May 25. Tickets from the Theatre Royal website.
