I needed something fun to watch as my other half was away and Lockwood & Co is too scary to see alone. Then I realised Girls5Eva had just dropped on Netflix (it’s Girls *5* Eva because ‘forever’s too short’) which was *3* good to be true. Tina Fey exec produces it, pops up in cameos, and it has all the Fey FEELS. This was exactly what I needed for a few girls’ nights in – just me and the dog while the boys slept upstairs and the husband oversaw his mother’s eye operation in Hereford.

Girls5Eva occupies a 30Rock space mixed with a dash of SATC and a soupçon of The Blues Brothers. They’re putting the band back together, you see. Girls5Eva were a flash-in-the-pan success story twenty years ago, but now, approaching middle age, they’re going to give fame and fortune another shot. Only now they have wrinkles and baggage and waning oestrogen levels and, frankly, the whole idea of them making it again as a girl band is ridiculous. The ageing beauty of this show is that it’s all absurd, yet it works.

The band consists of Dawn, ‘the chill one’, the most normal, married with a child, and working in a restaurant prior to the comeback. Then there’s Gloria, now a dentist, and Summer, a neglected trophy wife. Finally, there’s Wickie, ‘the fierce one’. Wickie is played by Renée Elise Goldsberry, and she transfixed me so completely that I had to look her up, and that’s when I found out she played Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton, so now I’m a fully paid-up member of the Renée Appreciation Society. She’s completely hypnotic in this role – beeyootiful, of course, but also mad and bad in the best way. Wickie is narcissistic, entitled, duplicitous, dismissive, egotistical… I couldn’t love her more.

Anyway, this isn’t the Wickie show - though she deserves a spin-off of her own - but a tight foursome-ensemble (the original fifth member of Girls5Eva sadly passed in an infinity pool incident). It’s the demented friendship between the ‘girls’ that drives the narrative, and the sense that for all of them, this time it’s about taking control, owning their success and flourishing in their perimenopausal prime. That makes it sound schmaltzy but the show is far too crazy to be sentimental. It’s so fast-paced that you have to listen hard not to miss some of the excellent throwaway jokes, the showbiz world they’re trying to break back into is deranged, nonsensical, stupid, and the regular flashbacks to first-time-round-fame reinforce the lunacy of it all. Plus, the songs are great – witty and catchy AF, with lyrics that make you spit out your tea. Oh, and they can really sing. Dawn is played by Sara Bareilles, a singer-songwriter who’s sold over three million albums IRL, and as previously discussed, Renée is a golden-voiced goddess who performed ‘Satisfied’ so exquisitely and electrically that it gave me goosebumps.

All in all, it’s different, weird, riotous and ultimately warm and joyful without being saccharine. It’s heartening to see four funny, talented middle-aged women on screen in a series created by another funny, talented middle-aged woman (Meredith Scardino), with Queen Tina at the helm. Women who prove that you can still be cool and exciting in between mammograms, and that the best things come to those who refuse to cease and desist. If that hasn’t persuaded you to watch, then I’ll give it one last shot by sharing the lyrics to one of Dawn’s songs, which spoke to me very deeply. If Adele sang ballads like this, she’d have a whole new legion of hot-flushing fans, 5-real:

I’m Afraid (Dawn’s Song of Fears)

I'm afraid of heights, afraid of tryin'
And I'm afraid I might have been a little stupid to write this song
I'm afraid that during high winds
The stop sign will uproot and decapitate me
Or that I might thrive under Scientology
I'm afraid that after I die
Someone will have sex with my dead body
And be like, "Not worth it"
I'm afraid I could raise a son who'd get radicalized on Reddit
Or that he'll Back to the Future, and I'll think he's hot
And I'm afraid that I'll accidentally text a pic of my vagina to my dad
And I'm afraid that on Ancestry.com
I might find out I have a bunch of half siblings
And they'll want to be in my life
I'm afraid that if I got an awful disease, I wouldn't be brave
I'd just be a bitch and be mean or if I needеd emergency hеart surgery
The doctor would go, "Hello nipple hair"
Sometimes I'm afraid to hold a new baby
What if I lose control of my arms for a second?
And throw it at the ceiling fan or something like that
Can't I trust my arms?

And I'm afraid, that under every bus stop is a sinkhole of rats
And I'm afraid, they lie about expiration dates and my hummus is fungus
And afraid that the second I leave town, I'll get a UTI
Why can't they just sell those pills over the counter?
I don't need a doctor
I know exactly what it is

Oh, back to my kid, I have more stuff about him
I only breastfed for four months, is he gonna be a bond trader?
And I'm afraid that if I'm lucky enough to be 80
I'll be one of those ladies whose entire scalp is visible when the sun shines through her salmon colored hair
And I'm afraid that someone will find out that I memorized all the words to Macklemore's "Thrift Shop"
Or that I bought seven seasons of The Mentalist
And of course, I'm afraid that somewhere, deep inside of me, is a lost tampon
Where did you go? Where did you go?
I am afraid

• Girls5Eva, two series, Netflix