Jerome K Jerome

I've always had a vague idea that Three Men in a Boat, with the participants' interminable discussions of the state of their innards, renditions of unfunny jokes and constant trips to the pub, just wasn't for me. Boys' stuff.

Then along comes a Sparklab production for BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial that leaves me helpless with laughter and admiration. So I recant my former unthinking critique - the kind of thing the book's author Jerome K Jerome was well used to as he declared himself "the best abused writer in England" for a good 20 years after its 1889 publication.

The tale of a trio of under-the-weather Edwardian gents who think a paddle up the Thames will be good for their constitutions is adapted by Chris Harrald and produced by Melanie Harris with a fine attention to detail and an ear for the nuances of a comic literary style.

The glorious prelude to getting afloat - the haphazard packing, the oversleeping, the ineffectual navigation of Waterloo Station - is a cumulative humour attack, as are the thought bubbles about previous comic mishaps, which are worked up into delightful setpieces.

Most striking is how contemporary are the characters' preoccupations. Okay, there are no smartphones, takeaways or hip hop, and J has to visit the British Library to indulge his hypochondriacal tendencies. But his conclusion that he suffers from every condition listed in an A-Z of diseases, barring housemaid's knee - which he finds rather hurtful - will be familiar to many who google their suspected symptoms.

None of the cast - Julian Rhind-Tutt, Hugh Dennis and his erstwhile double-act partner Steve Punt - aims to grab the comic glory or play to the gallery. In fact, they are all rather Pooterish, and, as in the Grossmiths' The Diary of a Nobody, whose protagonist begat that term, the emphasis is on a wryness of tone and a synthesis of apparently unintentional hilarity.

Moira Petty, The Stage, 16th September 2013