Review: A TOUCH OF CLOTH III – 'Too Cloth for Comfort'

Charlie Brooker's hilarious spoof crime thriller A TOUCH OF CLOTH debuted three years ago, and yet these are only the fifth and sixth episodes. That's slow-going even by usual British standards, but the "less is more" adage rings truer for spoofs than other genres. 1982 U.S comedy Police Squad! was infamously axed after just six half-hours, and I've always partly believed it's because this brand of humour gets wearying after awhile. When jokes are so dense, audiences crave some breathing space after awhile, so A Touch of Cloth's best creative decision has been to only produce two hours a year.

August 2014 Highlights - DOCTOR WHO, INTRUDERS, THE KILLING, MASTERS OF SEX, OUTLANDER, A TOUCH OF CLOTH...

It's August! Summer's still here, but there's lots of good reasons to stay indoors with the television on. Below are my prime picks of shows hitting US and UK screens over the next four weeks, so read on if you need to plan your TV month...

Review: Sky1's A TOUCH OF CLOTH II: UNDERCOVER CLOTH

written by Charlie Brooker, Daniel Maier & Boris Starling | directed by Jim O'Hanlon

What's essentially the British version of The Naked Gun trilogy returns for its second two-part special (with a third, filmed simultaneously, hopefully due to air sooner than next summer). It's alarming we've had to wait so long for A Touch of Cloth II, but that perhaps demonstrates how busy writer Charlie Brooker is juggling other projects. However, the slow drip of Cloth is perhaps for the best, as this quick-fire style of comedy overstays its welcome once it starts to feel gruelling—like watching a long weekend of Tim Vine stand-up. For that reason, I'm grateful A Touch of Cloth: Undercover Cloth is now airing across two Sundays, rather than two consecutive days...

Sky1's A TOUCH OF CLOTH review

Part One

Part Two

Satirist Charlie Brooker understands how to approach a spoof; the genre many say was perfected in the '80s by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ) with their classic Airplane!, building on Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Since then, the form's sadly devolved into dumb mimicry, spearheaded by detestable claptrap like Scary Movie and Epic Movie, but Brooker laudably approached A Touch of Cloth with the classics in mind...

Sky developing crime spoof A TOUCH OF CLOTH

Charlie Brooker (Dead Set) and Daniel Maier (Harry Hill's TV Burp) have joined forced to write a two-hour crime drama spoof called A Touch Of Cloth for Sky.

The one-off spoof will star John Hannah (Spartacus) as "maverick, heavy drinking loner" DCI Jack Cloth, Suranne Jones (Unforgiven) as his "plucky no-nonsense" partner DC Anne Oldman, and Julian Rhind-Tutt (Green Wing) as their boss Tom Boss.

Charlie Brooker, co-writer:

"After you've seen A Touch of Cloth you'll never be able to watch another detective show again. Not because it's a devastating piss take, but because you'll have smashed your TV into pieces in a disappointed fury."

Daniel Maier, co-writer:

"It's like Airplane! for a detective series except for not being Police Squad."

The parody will see Cloth and Oldman trying to catch a devious serial killer who leaves a trail of increasingly grisly murders. Co-stars include Daisy Beaumont as forensic pathology Natasha Sachet, Navin Chowdhry as DC Asap Qureshi, Adrian Bower as DC Des Hairhan, Raquel Cassidy as Claire Hawkchurch and Theo Barklem-Biggs as Darren Crossway.

Annabel Jones, Executive Producer for Zeppotron:

"Having tackled zombies in Dead Set, A Touch Of Cloth is a very funny and reliably corpse-strewn homage to the best of British cop shows. We're delighted to have such a wonderful cast and such a great detective in John Hannah, who we're sure will get to the bottom of things. But not too quickly, or the final 15 minutes will consist of awkward whistling."

A Touch Of Cloth is part of Sky's commitment to original British content, which it's aiming to increase an investment in by 50% over three years, meaning it'll be spending £600m a year by 2014. Recent efforts towards this goal have included Mad Dogs, Thorne, Flying Monsters 3D, Trollied and Mount Pleasant.