Suranne Jones

A new series of affectionate mockumentaries following Brian Pern, the erstwhile frontman of progressive rockers Thotch. In tonight's first episode, Brian unveils a radical look, courtesy of new wife Astrid (Suranne Jones), who reveals that she will soon be taking over as Brian's manager. Astrid's quest for easy money lands Brian at the Isle Of Wight festival, and also on a Thotch fan cruise, complete with celebrity auction. John Thomson gets it just right as Thotch's fan club president, Perry.

Charlie Brooker's police drama spoof returned for a third double bill last week, with DI Jack Cloth (John Hannah) and Suranne Jones's DI Anne Oldman (pronounced "an old man", a joke that - honestly - only improves with repetition) investigating the death of Cloth's brother. To describe the comedy as hit and miss would be an understatement: Brooker unselfconsciously bombards the audience with material that veers from the tedious to the sublimely silly.

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."

Suranne Jones interview

"I class Scott & Bailey as a serious day job and A Touch of Cloth as my naughty evenings," says Jones.

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.

The spoof policer A Touch of Cloth is still finding send-up potential in the flickering grisly grey wallpaper of our lives. (And what would the wallpaper be called on a poncey shadecard? "Maverick").

John Hannah is still maverick, still brilliant, still boozed-up. In the opening scene he was pouring himself a double from the optic on his car dashboard. The camera pulled back to reveal the car was a taxi. Aha, maybe he's now an ex-maverick! And maybe the force wants him back in spite of all his maverickness because only he can crack the case! How well we know this genre, how dreary our existences.

Back in the incident-room, back in the old routine, DI Cloth (Hannah) demanded of his team they left no turn unstoned in the hunt for the suspect, and he did this in rhyme: "Who's his mother, who's his dad?/Has he read Beevor's Stalingrad? What's his height, what's his weight?/How often does he masturbate?" The team includes Suranne Jones, one of my favourite actresses and, I'm sure, one of Cloth creator Charlie Brooker's, too. Enduring so much bad telly for a living, as Brooker used to do, he must have fantasised about getting hard-worked actresses to say ridiculous, and rude, things.

Her character Anne Oldman and Cloth have a history, or a History. It's a big, deep, throbbing history like Beevor's Stalingrad. For back-up there's Adrian Bower and Navin Chowdhry who must come as a double-act because they were in Teachers together. Great show, Teachers, and remarkably it wasn't a crime drama. Chowdhry's copper seems to know everything about everyone, eg: "Likes: Homes Under The Hammer and Steely Dan." Don't we all (the Dan I mean)? Maybe not every gag is a zinger but similar to buses and girls though sadly not Steely Dan albums there's always another one coming round the corner.

Charlie Brooker's spoof of overwrought murder dramas returns for another two-part saga. Jack Cloth (John Hannah) is off the force, sitting in his car with a whisky optic installed on the dashboard. When actor turned policeman Todd Carty (Todd Carty) is shot up in a robbery, however, Cloth returns to help his old colleague and flirting partner, Anne Oldman (Suranne Jones), catch the criminal bigwig responsible.

The show was borne of a desire to slay all the tropes of British detective shows, but the genre in-jokes - there's a line about characters who talk facing away from the screen having their dialogue dubbed in later to fix plot holes - don't provide as many big laughs as the silly visual gags and the shameless smut. Perhaps this should be a different kind of comedy altogether.

This slice of theatrical in-jokery, written by actors Catherine McCormack and Laura Power, takes a caustic glance at the hardcore fans who hang around stage doors waiting for their idols. There's a brace of women so stung by John Nettles they're on a restraining order and a Suranne Jones devotee who handcrafts mad gifts.