Karen Gillan

The Party's Just Beginning review

The film's supporting cast boasts an array of Scottish acting talent.

It's co-written by Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier, whose writing credits include Harry Hill's TV Burp, and there's a lot of Burp in both the affectionate spoofing of British television conventions and the relentless onslaught of silliness. The convoluted plots of police procedurals usually require some viewer concentration, but here it's the gags that have you reaching for rewind on the TiVo remote. There are so many of them - visual, verbal, saucy and slapstick - that to watch A Touch of Cloth is to be constantly plagued by the fear that you've missed something brilliant.

Casting John Hannah as DI Jack Frost and Suranne Jones as DC Anne Oldman (pronounced "an old man") is a particular joy, given both of them have often appeared in exactly the kind of series ridiculed here. It wouldn't be half as much fun to have a comedian deliver lines like, "You never get used to the way you get used to it and that takes some getting used to" and keep a straight face.

This season there's also new blood in the shape of Doctor Who's Karen Gillan as... er... Kerry Newblood. It's an opportunity to send up all those clichés pertaining to rookies, of which there are plenty. Not that there's any danger of the writers running out of material. As long as TV's obsession with grisly murders and maverick cops continues, there'll always be a case for DCI Cloth to solve.

Radio Times review

A third outing for Charlie Brooker's Naked Gun-style cop spoof, although the comparison's becoming fainter and fainter. This is the strongest instalment yet, because the show's built up its own armoury of bad puns, ridiculous direction and smashed fourth walls. It no longer needs to bother about specifically spoofing individual crime dramas, either.

The story, as if that's important, concerns a serial killer who seems to be linked to a sinister therapy spa. Adrian Dunbar plays its powerful owner, doing a particularly good maniacal laugh that goes on for much too long. Karen Gillan is a bit underused as the squad's naive new flibbertigibbet, but that's fine because regular stars John Hannah and Suranne Jones are better than ever at straight-faced, dignity-shredding baloney. Keep looking out for the signs on the wall behind them.

Prepare for more puerile police procedural parody, as this hilarious spoof detective drama returns to our screens.

Shamelessly sending up crime investigation shows such as Luther, Cracker and A Touch Of Frost, odd couple cops DCI Jack Cloth (John Hannah) and DI Anne Oldman (Suranne Jones) once again take on another gruesome case - this time the murder of Cloth's estranged brother. But, as ever, the plot is secondary to all manner of tongue-in-cheek gags and side-splitting visual jokes.

"The humour in this is essentially just silliness," laughs Suranne, 35. "It's just perfect fodder for mickey taking. I'm still doing Scott & Bailey, so I've now got a 'cliché monitor' in my head. Whenever I spot something, it makes me chuckle in honour of A Touch Of Cloth."

Joining the cast is former Doctor Who companion Karen Gillan. Playing rookie recruit Kerry Newblood, she finds herself the victim of an ambush by a gorilla!

As a veteran of cop shows such as Rebus, John Hannah feels the genre is ripe for ridicule. "Anyone who watches TV will get the jokes in A Touch Of Cloth," claims John, 52. "I'm so sick of police shows where you know exactly what it's going to be like."

Hilarious signs in A Touch Of Cloth

Hilarious signs and Karen Gillan's patted bottom: did you spot all these gags from A Touch of Cloth?

That thin line between stupid and clever isn't always a funny one. The concluding part of Charlie Brooker's would-be non-stop laughfest gets becalmed between metatextual policier spoofing and jokes about bumming. The inventive sight gags that distinguished our first stint with Jack Cloth (John Hannah) and Anne Oldman (Suranne Jones) have been largely sacrificed in favour of exhausting single entendres, while the repetition that begins as part of the joke ends up being plain repetitive.

Which is a shame, as it's always fun watching serious actors (in this case, gnarled mobster Stephen Dillane and uppity politician Anna Chancellor) being very silly. The understandably threadbare plot, by the way, sees Cloth's cover blown and Goodgirl (Chancellor) locking horns with Boss (Julian Rhind-Tutt) over whose running the city of Town. Rather more miss than hit; perhaps Karen Gillan and Adrian Dunbar, lined up for the imminent third series, can revive a concept that's run out of steam rather quicker than we might have hoped.

How to get Josie Long to come to your house

Time for a quick popular culture quiz. What do Stuart Murdoch from Belle and Sebastian, Doctor Who star Karen Gillan, theatre performer Jenna Watt, and comedian Josie Long all have in common?

Gerard Butler has made some stinkers in his time (The Bounty Hunter, Phantom of the Opera and The Ugly Truth to name a few), but one role he did do rather well in was the muscle-bound comic adaptation 300. This makes his casting as Coriolanus's fearsome nemesis, Aufidius, in Ralph Fiennes's upcoming brutal film version of Shakespeare's play seem rather apt. Butler joins Graham Norton along with Doctor Who star Karen Gillan and Noel Gallagher - who also performs his new single.

Karen Gillan cast in David Baddiel's new movie

Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) and while Robert Sheehan (Misfits) have signed to star in Romeo And Brittney, the follow-up movie from comedian David Baddiel (The Infidel).