Cressida, who retired from acting to marry a barrister and raise a family, is hoping to get back to acting, after catching her husband, Rupert, in flagrante with a woman young enough to be their daughter. Given Cressida’s age, her agent can only offer her ads for incontinence pads. Penny, a distinguished interviewer and war correspondent, finds herself on the shelf as the TV channel decides to promote her vain and incompetent male co-host into a primetime slot. And Jo was fired despite her skills by a new studio boss because she drew attention to his bulldozing of good ideas.

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It is Jo’s response to this that underpins the plot. She is the first to demonstrate the forms that revenge can take, and her method is decidedly Shakespearean. Having the advantage of already being tall and rangy, she uses her special-effects skills to reinvent herself as “Joseph”, and, like Portia, Viola and Imogen, she goes back into the men’s world. The studio that fired her as a “menopausal mess” of a woman now pays her far more, and she sees how the men really talk about the women. At first, her old uni girlfriends don’t recognise her, but as she opens up to them and they share their stories back, the women’s club is formed, and the fun begins.

How the Revenge Club hits its targets is funny and wicked. Sometimes decidedly the latter. Occasionally there is a whiff of that wonderful Irish immorality-play series, Bad Sisters (five sisters plotting to remove a brother-in-law who would have been the star of Reddit’s “Am I The Asshole?” thread). And as with Bad Sisters, failure is as much a part of the story as success. However, comeuppances do happen, despite the white-water rafting the quartet must navigate. How the four women raft through is what kept me reading – and laughing.

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