MPs’ expenses, phone hacking and coalition government – a lot has changed since Yes, Prime Minister was last broadcast.

Former Premier Harold Wilson once observed that a week is a long time in politics, and in the 24 years since Sir Humphrey, the unsurpassed mandarin, and his puppet Prime Minister appeared on our screens, the political landscape has changed beyond all recognition.

Or has it?

True, there has been much in the way of new material for writers Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn to mine for laughs, but watching the farce at Chequers unravel on stage at the Oxford Playhouse it struck me that there is no room for nostalgia.

The concept, focused on the cat-and-mouse dynamic between politicians and civil servants, proves itself to be timeless in this slick, cynical satire.

And while the intervening Blair years saw the rise and rise of another BBC political sitcom, The Thick of It, a dark, expletive-laden look at Whitehall's spin doctors, I couldn’t help feeling that this cosy, classy production was a masterclass in the mechanisms of a Conservative government.

So perhaps the time is right for a stage revival of Yes, Prime Minister.

I was curious to see how it would play to an Oxfordshire audience, some of them hailing from Cameron country.

The answer was very well. An appreciative crowd enjoyed marathon jargon-laden monologues from Simon Holmes as Sir Humphrey, standing in for Michael Simkins, and the increasingly infantile mannerisms of Graham Seed’s desperate and drink-addled Prime Minister.

Clive Hayward as the bumbling Bernard Woolley provided a pleasing fall guy.

Fans of Newsnight will also be amused by Tim Wallers’s turn as the BBC hack Simon Chester, whose mannerisms bear more than a passing resemblance to Jeremy Paxman.

Yes, Prime Minister runs at the Playhouse until Saturday.