Charlie Brooker

Easy to mock the cliches of crime dramas in, say, a sketch show; much harder to do it at full length. Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier managed triumphantly, writing the kind of extended, fizzing spoof that brought back happy memories of the Naked Gun films. It didn't hurt that the cast had form in the genre - leads John Hannah and Suranne Jones have both played detectives in straight dramas and proved just as good at po-faced parody. Plus there were enough throwaway visual gags to make it a DVD banker.

2012's been a great year for Charlie Brooker. His satirical anthology Black Mirror (which, by the way, is coming back early next year) and cop spoof A Touch of Cloth were massive hits, he was named 'Best Comedy Entertainment Personality' at the British Comedy Awards and he welcomed his first child with wife Konnie Huq.

Despite all that though, Charlie still has tons to moan about from the last 12 months in his annual Wipe programme - like the Olympic Games, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the US presidential election. Thankfully we won't have to wait another year for our next slice of Brooker grouching - a new weekly series will follow 2012 Wipe on BBC Two.

As ever in these media-saturated times, there is plenty for Charlie Brooker to sink his satirical teeth into over the last 12 months, though for once, not all of it has been bad. He'll be reflecting on the Olympics, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the jailing of members of Pussy Riot and, of course, the US presidential election in which the Republicans both scared us and added to the gaiety of nations. Limmy, Sharon Horgan and Peter Serafinowicz also contribute.

Not many shows this year, if any, were as hilarious as Charlie Brooker's Sky1 comedy. A Touch of Cloth maintained its alarmingly high rate of jokes throughout the entire two hours, delightfully mocking the clichés of crime procedurals - littering the show with sight gags (the absolutely spot-on opening titles), silly wordplay ("Bi, Jack." "Don't leave!") and one-liners ("Sarge says to go there during the ad break").

It's a genius idea that could have backfired terribly if the execution was lacking. Fortunately, that wasn't the case, and we couldn't stop laughing. The stars - including leads John Hannah and Suranne Jones - brilliantly deadpan the whole script, while Todd Carty's unexpected and inexplicable appearance was the icing on an entertaining cake.

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