Fourteen years after it last aired on the BBC, The Grapes opens its Early Doors once more. Set in a Stockport pub, Craig Cash and Phil Mealey's low-fi sitcom focused on the customers who turn up as soon as the pub traditionally opens for the evening. A celebration of the extraordinary within the ordinary, on one hand it centres on the minutiae of life while also expressing the larger aspects in the love and friendship between put-upon landlord Ken (John Henshaw) and his troupe of oddball regulars.

It's a portrait that Cash and Mealey have transferred to the stage successfully, even throwing in a narrative curveball to keep up the pace in this extended tale. The cosy, almost claustrophobic confines of the pub are emphasised by the split-level stage: the bar downstairs and the living quarters upstairs, which is largely the domain of matriarch Jean (Judith Barker).

Most of the original cast have returned, but where two of the number are absent, it's used to get one of the biggest laughs of the night: due to a gas explosion Eddie and Joan are no more, but the 'unique' idiosyncratic couple are simply replaced by another, almost identical one who have since also discovered The Grapes' delights.

Much of the comedy is derived from a series of setpiece double acts: lothario Duffy (Mealey) and unassuming Joe (Cash); the bent coppers always on the lig with Kenny as their straight man; Jean and cleaner Winnie (Joan Kempson). Kempson in particular shines, relishing her punchlines without over-egging them.

What Cash and Mealey have tapped into here – like Cash's The Royle Family alongside Caroline Aherne – is the humour inherent in working-class northern culture. The laughs are big and plenty, with the jokes carefully crafted: a line from Joe about Viagra and gout is close to perfect. Elsewhere there's a comforting old-fashioned quality that fits perfectly, a world of Battenberg slices, pints of mild and jokes about pile cream.

Events are only very gently brought up to date with Joe's vaping and Duffy messing with Tinder, but that sepia hue remains. After all, though created just after the millennium, Early Doors always harked back to a bygone era which was all part of its considerable charm.

Early Doors Live is on tour until Sun 7 Oct. Seen at Lowry Theatre, Salford, Tue 4 Sep.