The Full Monty's Sheffield revival strips bare hollow claims of 'Levelling Up': Jayne Dowle

The film, its stars including Robert Carlyle (who won a BAFTA for his portrayal of Gaz Schofield), Leeds-born Tom Wilkinson and Mark Addy, who comes from Tang Hall, York, had realism, sure, but it also had hope.

Its premise, that life might be grim but things could only get better, symbolised the end of John Major’s discredited Tory government, and looked ahead to a brighter, Labour-led future, with a new PM, Tony Blair at the helm.

Released in August 1997, The Full Monty provided a muscular counterpoint to the mushy Richard Curtis-esque rom-coms the British film industry had become famous for in the 1990s.

And it was also one of the most successful British films to date, grossing more than $250 million worldwide from a budget of only $3.5 million. In fact, it was the highest-grossing film in the UK until it was outsold by Titanic in November 1997.

Laughs came a-plenty back in 1997, when a gang of unemployed steelworkers took their clothes off for money and no-one had even heard of food banks.

A quarter of a century on, there’s precious little stripping, unless you count the asset-stripping of numerous steel and engineering works over the years, plus any lead that might be going off roofs of derelict buildings. Laughs you will find, but most of the darkly comic and ironic variety.

In one early shot in the eight-part series, to be broadcast on the Disney + channel from June 14, Destiny (Talitha Wing) the aptly-named teenage daughter of Gaz Schofield, walks past the fictional Milnthorpe Working Mens’ Club, in the throes of being closed down.

In real life, Shiregreen Club - with its proud sign, ‘Home of the Full Monty’ - where the scene with the crowd baying as the lads revealed all was filmed, closed its doors in 2018, and was hit by fire in April this year. There’s been talk that the TV series might bring back that the sightseers, but it would take a lot more than a few tourists to turn back the clock.

I don’t suppose many government ministers will bother to watch the series, but if they want to see how their laughable ‘levelling-up’ promises play out in real life without leaving their Westminster desks, they should make time.

Lesley Sharp's character Jean is headteacher of the local school, which is falling into disrepair, while her husband, Dave (Mark Addy), is the caretaker. This is a nuance that won’t be lost in the many communities still reeling from the seismic shock of traditional role reversal since heavy industry declined.

Horse (Paul Barber), rides a mobility scooter these days and is shown struggling to cope as his disability benefits are cut. Ministers may care to note that the bureaucracy he battles isn’t remotely fictious; thousands of people will be in the same situation, constituents who have really been ‘left behind’.

The biggest star however, has to be Sheffield, again. Sheffield always astounds outsiders with its uncompromising natural and urban beauty; watch out for shots of the city centre, Gleadless Valley and Park Hill.

Whilst the film laid bare (literally) the decline of the steel industry and asked serious questions about would come next, today, the South Yorkshire city is a place where past and future are colliding, with aspirations, ambitions, and far more tolerance.

It’s too early to tell whether this new television series, on a subscription channel for now at least, will become epoch-making in the same way as the far more esoteric TV drama Our Friends in the North did back in 1996, starring Daniel Craig, Mark Strong, Gina McKee and Christopher Eccleston in a hard-hitting expose of change and corruption in Newcastle and the North East.

However, it is important. Anyone who lives or works in the kind of communities it represents, will feel an immediate connection that our interests, concerns, problems and frustrations, are represented as real.

And as for those politicians who purport to hold an interest in tackling long-held endemic problems of poverty, ill-health, social isolation and family breakdown, it really should send a wake-up call.

Things haven’t got better since the boys first hung their hats up; in many ways they have got tragically worse.