Yet in spite of it all, the series works more often than not. The show (created by Simon Beaufoy, who also wrote the film) makes the bet that although the stripper plot might be what most people remember about The Full Monty, what most people liked about it was its spirit — the camaraderie between its characters, the easy sense of humor, the affectionate but not sugarcoated view of small-town life. It pays off as a sequel that, for all its shortcomings, retains much of its predecessor’s unassuming charm.

As a brief prologue notes, the eight-episode season picks up 26 years, seven prime ministers and eight Northern regeneration policies after the picture left off. In some ways, much has changed. Lomper (Steve Huison) is unhappy to learn in the premiere that today’s youth are offended by the name of the café he owns with his husband (Paul Clayton), especially as he hadn’t realized “Big Baps” was meant to be a double entendre to begin with. The old-timers who gather in the booths to grumble about “what’s wrong with this country,” like Gerald (Tom Wilkinson) and Darren (Miles Jupp, a new addition to the core gang), can commiserate. Meanwhile, Horse (Paul Barber), an even older old-timer, struggles to understand what “hashtag bloody Me Too” is to begin with.

In other regards, though, not much has changed at all. The city looks possibly even more run-down than it did back in the day. The shabby theater where the guys once put on their Chippendales-inspired act has long since crumbled into ruin. The local school, where Dave (Mark Addy) serves as caretaker and his wife (Lesley Sharp) as headmistress, is beset by structural damage and ever-stricter budget cuts. The local hospital, where Gaz (Robert Carlyle) works as a porter, is so severely understaffed that nurses have taken to over-medicating psych patients to make them easier to handle. Nor is life much easier for the next generation: Gaz’s teenage daughter, Destiny (Talitha Wing), is barely scraping by in class and struggling with an unstable home situation at her mom’s.