I’m Sorry, Prime Minister packs a surprisingly poignant punch ...Middle East

Yes, Minister and its successor Yes, Prime Minister, those cherishable 1980s hits from the BBC, are still routinely chosen as one of the best sitcoms ever produced in this country.

The upwardly failing – and flailing – politician Jim Hacker and civil servant Sir Humprey Appleby, a master of verbose obfuscation, were immortalised by Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne, and such was the appetite to enjoy more of these characters’ verbal sparring and misadventures that writers Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn produced a hit stage play in 2010.

In what is billed as the “final chapter”, Lynn (Jay died in 2016) now updates us on the duo deep into their respective retirements – and the result is more elegiac and emotive than we might have been expecting.

Lynn co-directs with Michael Gyngell a production that originated at the Barn, Cirencester, and as the first half plodded along more than somewhat laboriously, I feared that the whole venture would prove to be nothing more than a shoo-in for those who like to harrumph about the absurdities of young people “nowadays”, with their “woke nonsense”.

The set-up suggests that this is the likely outcome: the ailing Jim Hacker (Griff Rhys Jones, ramshackly looking in old man’s trousers) is the Master of Hacker College, Oxford, although this cushy sinecure is threatened by a mutiny among the fellows and students, who object to his dubious views on empire and trigger warnings. Hacker’s new care-worker is graduate Sophie (Stephanie Levi-John), who, as a young, black, gay, working-class woman, appears ripe to be a mouthpiece for/butt of every conceivable jab at diversity.

In mounting desperation at the pickle he finds himself in, Hacker calls his old frenemy Sir Humphrey (Clive Francis), who thanks to bad treatment by his money-grubbing son and daughter-in-law is currently languishing in a home for the ‘elderly deranged’. Yet fear not: Sir H is as smooth and sharp as ever and Francis makes neat work of his trademark dauntingly long and wordy speeches.

It is poignant to watch these two old men with withered power, money worries and no meaningful emotional connections in their lives; all those years of political machinations meant that scant time was left to nurture family relationships.

“I used to understand how things worked,” says Hacker plaintively, and it is impossible to miss the pathos in this statement, as well as in the mild physical indignities that this walking-stick user suffers. Rhys Jones has fun picking up items, including a milk jug, with his grabber stick; I certainly enjoyed the physical comedy more than the gentle canter through Brexit.

The ending, engineered by clever Sophie, packs a surprising punch and thus time’s whirligig enfolds even the all-conquering Sir Humphrey.

To 9 May (0330 333 4809, Apollo Theatre, London imsorryprimeminister.com)

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