It's been more than 40 years since Boys From The Blackstuff first aired on Britain's TV screens but this Bafta award-winning five-part series is still vividly remembered by many.
Whether TV's Sherwood creator James Graham's stage version can do justice to Alan Bleasdale's striking social commentary however, is another matter.
Set during the Thatcher era in 1980s Liverpool, at a time when more than three million people were unemployed, the story follows a group of out of work tarmac layers: Yosser, Chrissie, Dixie, Loggo and George.
Flawed, funny, and for the most part, fearless, the five men are desperately hustling for work while trying to escape the 'sniffers' from the dole office, whose mission is to catch them working cash-in-hand while signing on.
The slightly menacing but obviously so much more vulnerable Yosser is played with gusto by Jay Johnson. After a more lucid, articulate and slightly less endearing portrayal of the out-of-work single dad than on the small screen in the first half - possibly more to do with the writing than with Johnson himself, the second half sees Hughes truly unravel in the way you expect.
Barking his sad catchphrase at anyone he sees in a uniform, from the milkman to the gasman, the lollipop lady to the vicar, he struts and nuts his way through the wreckage of life when you've seemingly lost everything - your job, your kids, your wife.
His children, eventually taken from him by social services, are unseen, which is a shame as having them on stage would have added greater pathos.
The scene that hits hardest is when Yosser attempts to commit suicide and is yanked back from the water's edge and wrestled to the ground by police.
Bruised and bloodied, he stumbles, his face contorted in pain, like a live version of Edvard Munch's painting: 'The Scream'. The slow motion effect choreography is stunningly effective in presenting the most tragic tableau of a broken man.
The other characters are strong, George Caple's Chrissie fittingly frustrated with his lot, if not exuding quite as much simmering fury as his TV namesake when he shoots his chickens. Jurell Carter is perfect as the laid-back Loggo and Ged McKenna paints a moving portrait of the avuncular wise man George.
Sian Polhill-Thomas meanwhile has the jaded, unflappable and essentially 'good egg' unemployment investigator Ms Sutcliffe down to a T.
What is especially impressive is the way writer James Graham and director Kate Wasserberg manage to successfully condense a whole TV series into just over a couple of hours, without leaving out a single key bit. That means a fair bit of storyline rearranging when it comes to what happens when but it works extremely well.
The play might be more than four decades old but with today's cost of living crisis, joblessness and in-work poverty, it feels as relevant as ever. The stigma surrounding mental health decline in men, too, is just as much an issue today.
It would be almost impossible for any stage performance of this play to dedicate the time that each character, each scene deserves.
The medium of theatre simply just doesn't lend itself to those little nuances that made the TV series so iconic - the close-ups of Yosser's face depicting his mental torment, Dixie's tears when he's humiliated as a security guard.
But that doesn't really matter. What the theatre version does do brilliantly is to enhance the feeling of community amid the chaos, the solidarity of the people.
If you're old enough to remember the TV version and not too much of a sticker for sameness, you'll love it. And if you've never seen the story before, you'll likely be just as impressed.
It's raw, it's real and it radiates resilience and warmth. The story of the Boys From the Blackstuff is as far from redundant as can be.
