Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, goes the old witticism.

Last night was pure nostalgia. A knowing nostalgia. A trip back to a 90s televisual treat none of us really expected was coming.

But come it did, as Drop the Dead Donkey marks the 30th anniversary (yes 30) with

The Reawakening!

Starring the original cast members Susannah Doyle, Robert Duncan, Ingrid Lacey, Neil Pearson, Jeff Rawle, Stephen Tompkinson and Victoria Wicks, the iconic BAFTA and EMMY award-winning comedy is reimagined in this brand-new topical commentary on the cutthroat world of 24 hours news.

Once again written by co-creators Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, the iconic 90s sitcom is on stage for the first time. And as most things which make a comeback, half the pleasure is revisiting a world and characters you thought you’d seen the last of, left firmly in a book of remembrance, only to be opened in the event of the occasional unlocking of a memory, prefaced with, hey, do you remember…

The joy of DTDD (oh yes, I’ve done that…) was how very satirical and topical (and all the other ‘icals’) it was, much like other shows of its time (HIGNFY – yep I did that too)…

You’d have the ongoing plotlines of the workplace politics and relationships, both in and out of, the Globe Link newsroom, alongside a couple of carefully crafted pieces of dialogue relating to the big stories ‘in real life’ that week. So it, in every sense, really was of its time. But did it make the leap to be of ‘this time’?

Well yes and no and that’s the point. The stage show gives us a good old dose of crowd-pleasing elements with much of the original cast, a throwback to Damien Day’s original schtick of taking a child’s teddy bear and bloody plimsoll to every ‘disaster zone’ he reported from, to add a dollop of poignancy and drama, plus a good few ‘remember whens’.

And that’s great. It pleased the crowd.

And we all accepted the plot where each character had been conscripted to work for a brand new news network called ‘TRUTH’, by an anonymous recruiter, tempted by the £££, with each stage entrance like seeing an old friend again. Twee but true.

It kept in its lane of ‘wasn’t this show bloody brilliant, and here’s a treat to relive it’ without trying to reinvent itself for the 2020s. That wasn’t the point.

That said, the cutting edge topical gags staked their place firmly in the narrative. As well as the obvious allusions to current governments, prime ministers, world threats and, of course, Tik Tok, the script went full throttle with a line about one Rochdale Labour candidate…

They (who are they, anyway) say you should never meet your heroes and you should never go back. On both points it depends.

In this instance, I was thrown back to a time when I was a young teenager (yes, young), tuning into the show in my bedroom, feeling oh so very on point with my love for current affairs based comedy. And I was thrilled to see the same characters on a stage in Salford, just as I remembered, but firmly through a lens of an unexpected one-off gift (you can find old eps on YouTube, by the way…)

Not there to be compared either to other stage shows or even to its own origin material. But to be enjoyed to take us back, and to make us laugh on (in this case) another rainy Tuesday on the Quays.

Not only that, Sir Trev makes an electrifying cameo to boot…

Drop the Dead Donkey- The Reawakening continues its run at The Lowry until this Saturday 17 February 2024.

For tickets, visit https://thelowry.com/whats-on/drop-the-dead-donkey-the-reawakening/