Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue

Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue picks up four familiar housemates decades on and finds them in rather more trouble than before: one of them out on bail, two of them running a dating app aimed squarely at pensioners, and all four still entirely incapable of leaving one another alone.

It is a parody, written for the stage and played broadly, and it keeps the rhythms of the sitcom it affectionately sends up: the kitchen table, the late-night confessions, the cheesecake. Robert Leleux wrote the script, moving the characters into a present full of apps, prescriptions and small indignities, and the jokes are pitched at an audience that knows these women well enough to hear the punchline coming and laugh anyway.

It suits audiences who grew up with the original and are happy to see it treated irreverently. It works best live, where the biggest laughs come from recognition — a look, a pause, a line delivered exactly the way the room has been waiting for.