Charlie Brooker

John Hannah and Suranne Jones take an affectionate hatchet to their previous work playing detectives in Rebus and Scott & Bailey, in a deadpan spoof of overblown serial-killer mysteries.

It's very much in the style of Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and is more frivolous and fun than you might expect from its creator, Charlie Brooker (Black Mirror, Dead Set).

Cloth fires a silly joke at the screen every second and, while a lot of them don't stick - sometimes it's too laborious in ticking off either cop-show clichés or jokes those American films did better - when it's funny, it's deliriously so.

Police Squad! was a thing of such shimmering perfection, it's no surprise that the only people to have come close to matching it have been the makers themselves. But Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier's Anglicised take on the quickfire nonsense-com is a bold and largely successful effort - pairing Suranne Jones's jobsworth and John Hannah's drunkard as incompetent cops hunting a crazed killer. The plot is more or less irrelevant. This is all about the gags, of which there are probably hundreds. The hit-rate is respectable - that you can see most of them coming a mile off doesn't detract from the enjoyment - while absurd cameos keep things lively. Subtler chuckles come from sly references to everything from Neil Young to Marathon Man.

Sky's A Touch Of Cloth started out so well. Charlie Brooker's spoof of every cop show ever (starring John Hannah as angst-ridden breaks-the-rules DCI Cloth and Suranne Jones as ambiguous love interest and dogmatic DC Anne Oldman) is timely and silly; it initially reminded me of the late Leslie Nielsen's Police Squad in its incessant visual puns and straight-faced double entendres and that is very high praise indeed. But then it went on - and on - and on. Now, the version given to press was a turgid 90 minutes, which has thankfully now been chopped into two parts for consecutive nights. But it's the same story throughout so I think it will still be a joke stretched too far. It's a shame, because at a snappier length, this would be a hoot and a much-needed antidote to our glut of murder.

A Touch of Cloth (Sky1), was/is (there's more on Monday) too long. Charlie Brooker's crime drama spoof, in which John Hannah and Suranne Jones gamely play characters not too dissimilar from ones they play in actual cop shows, is stuffed to the rafters with jokes. Very good jokes, less good jokes, clever jokes, stupid jokes, visual jokes, knowing jokes, new jokes, old jokes, surreal jokes, puns, nods, winks. There is no let-up, it's relentless - like there's a joke machine aimed at your head, and Charlie's not letting go of the trigger. After a while I was exhausted, and began to forget what the battle was all about. The are moments of razor-sharp brilliance, but it doesn't have the dark beauty, the resonance or the relevance of Black Mirror.

Video: Charlie Brooker interview

The journalist, screenwriter and broadcaster talks to Grace Dent about his arrogant attitude on his first day on The 11 O'Clock Show, revealing that when he joined the Channel 4 satirical programme he felt like he was 'drowning' alongside the other comic talent. He also discusses his idea for a reality show called Daily Mail Island.

Brooker & Maier build the perfect TV detective

Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier, the writers of A Touch of Cloth, dissect the anatomy of Jack Cloth, their new satirical cop show star.

Every cop cliché drama you've ever seen reports for duty in this forensically observed and daftly funny send-up by Charlie Brooker. Some of the puns are arrestable offences but terrific performances from crime-cracking duo Suranne Jones and John Hannah, who have both served time in 'proper' cop shows, keep the plot on track.

He may not be to everyone's taste but there's no doubting that Jonathan Ross can still attract the big names. Tonight, the ebullient chat show host is joined by tough-guy actor Ray Winstone, who discusses his new film The Sweeney. F1 driver Jenson Button and actress Suranne Jones - who stars in Charlie Brooker's spoof A Touch of Cloth, which starts on Sunday - are also in the studio. The music comes from R'n'B girl group Stooshe.

Charlie Brooker has said that the original intention of this two-part detective spoof was as a parody of Inspector Morse. What we have now is a comedy with the witty worldplay of The Naked Gun in which the lead cop is almost as screwed up as the criminal he's chasing. Clever casting ensures that the two leads, John Hannah and Suranne Jones, have TV detective series history (in Rebus and Scott & Bailey respectively) and here they play washed-up, alcoholic DCI Jack Cloth and DC Anne Oldman, who has a secret to hide and whose every instinct is inevitably proved to be wrong; there's a nice performance too from Julian Rhind-Tutt as police chief Tom Boss. With every possible joke wrung out of a storyline involving a sword-wielding serial killer there's a sense of overkill, but A Touch of Cloth is still often very funny.

Kayvan Novak, Sally Phillips, Morgana Robinson and Blake Harrison take turns to spoof a series of generic dramatic set-ups (the crime scene, the politician's mea culpa, the workplace) in this promising new sketch show scripted by a team including Charlie Brooker and Ben Caudell. A quality supporting cast of 'serious' actors, including Simon Callow, Ewen Bremner and Bill Paterson, provide the essential foundation of gravitas - it's worth a look just to see a poker-faced Denis Lawson ask, 'What kind of trousers does a cunt wear?' - while someone has also taken the smart decision not to risk trying the audience's patience with catchphrases or recurring characters. The result is fresh, funny and, impressively, even springs the occasional surprise. Better still, there's more tomorrow.