Well if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and no one’s taken the tool-kit to A Touch of Cloth.
Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier’s police procedural parody once more turns your television into a Naked Gun of puns and fires relentlessly at your face until you bleed laughter or your sense of humour is shot to shit and you’re forced to switch over.
You know the drill by now. Only the plot is the interchangeable component among the usual Police Squad! deadpannery taking place in the face of fourth wall shattering silliness. Certainly the now tired ‘Cloth’ and ‘Old Man’ jokes are still present, as Jack Cloth (John Hannah) and Anne Oldman (Suranne Jones) must solve the murder of Jack’s twin brother Terry Cloth (also John Hannah), and how the crime may link to a sinister health spa run by Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar, who fares better here than in BBC One’s Walter.
And yes. Terry Cloth. Don’t worry, they’re not all that bad.
This time Jack and his team are joined by out of her depth rookie Kerry Newblood, played by a neither blue nor bald Karen Gillan. Doctor Who‘s Gillan deadpans particularly well here, whether being attacked by a gorilla, falling for hirsute colleague Des Hairihan (Adrian Bower) or delivering lines such as ‘Six sheets of paper’s a lot for a woman’ with the utmost seriousness. It’s a different kind of comedy, but her performance here bodes well for her upcoming US sitcom Selfie.
Her presence may at least be enough to bring joke-jaded fans back to a show that became a little lacklustre in last year’s second outing. Thankfully some of the physical comedy missing from A Touch of Cloth 2 has returned, and if you’re a fan of the show’s penchant for background visual gags you’ll find there are more than ever. Best have your finger on that pause button to catch all the poster-gags placed around the police station.
Once again for every three jokes that work there’s one that doesn’t, but the firing rate is so exhaustingly high that the duds are quickly paved over with the usual keen observations on cop clichés. In fact by the end of Episode 1 you may feel you’ve been a victim of police pun brutality.
Airs at 9pm on Saturday 9 August 2014 on Sky1.