I’m Sorry, Prime Minister review – Hacker and Sir Humphrey return as baffled but charming old codgers

Jonathan Lynn’s farewell to the beloved parliamentary sitcom casts Griff Rhys Jones as ex-PM Jim Hacker, making one last call on his wily consigliere

Death comes to us all but, slightly before it, so too does that period when no one’s certain whether you’re still around. “I’m not dead,” splutters Griff Rhys Jones’s Jim Hacker in this Yes, Prime Minister reboot. “I’m in the House of Lords!” The ex-PM is also now master of an Oxford college, but is faced with expulsion from this sinecure by students riled by his affronts against woke orthodoxy. And so, in Jonathan Lynn’s elegiac swansong for his well-loved sitcom duo, Hacker calls upon his old consigliere Sir Humphrey to rescue him from trouble one last time.

Lynn (who wrote the original with the late Antony Jay) directs too, alongside Michael Gyngell, a production first staged in 2023 at the Barn in Cirencester. Its ambition, as Hacker’s care worker Sophie telegraphs by quoting Shelley’s Ozymandias, is to examine the mighty once they have fallen. Whither Hacker and Sir Humphrey, now exiled from the corridors of power, hanging on to a world they now barely understand? The latter is condemned to a care home, indeed, by his “evil queen” daughter-in-law. There is poignancy in that, but it’s not dwelled upon in a show that majors not in depth of feeling, far less dramatic incident, but in urbane wit and the illicit thrill of hearing old codgers say inappropriate things.

At its worst, it’s less a play than a vehicle for Lynn and his characters to discourse, not very insightfully, on trigger warnings and safe spaces. Stephanie Levi-John does spiritedly in the thankless role of Sophie, forever correcting her elders’ improprieties. Rhys Jones and Clive Francis as Sir Humphrey are a treat, too, the former blithering and pompous, the latter a delicious mixture of vulnerability and shrewdness – frail enough to give the stairlift a go, but with his skill intact for filibustering prolixity.

Their predicament here is low-stakes and not a great deal happens, as they bat conversational gambits back and forth (“Humphrey, why were you so keen on austerity?”) But Lynn’s perspective is arresting on age, irrelevance and their levelling effects – and the characters’ company is as charming as ever.

• At Apollo theatre, London, until 9 May.