A Touch Of Cloth

TV review: Sky1's A Touch of Cloth

This is Airplane humour at its best and the writers have more material to play with than a comedian riffing on John Terry.

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.

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.

Interview: John Hannah, star of A Touch of Cloth

John Hannah thought he was doomed to make an ordinary police series until he read the script and fell about laughing, writes Lisa Williams.

John Hannah: 'We're all sick of cop shows!'

John Hannah stars in Sky1's new spoof cop show A Touch of Cloth next week. Here, John talks about playing it straight...

John Hannah interview

Brief interview with A Touch Of Cloth star John Hannah.

Charlie Brooker is back and this time he's sent up your favourite detective series in two-part spoof A Touch of Cloth, which we here at Digital Spy already consider to be one of the funniest shows of the year.

John Hannah and Suranne Jones play DCIs Jack Cloth and Anne Oldman respectively, two coppers trying to connect the dots as series of murders take place in their alien world of c**k jokes, cringeworthy puns and incestuous corpse romancing. It's silly, silly stuff - maybe too silly for some - but the gags per-min rate is far above anything else on television right now. We promise you, something in A Touch of Cloth is bound to make you smile, even if you hate yourself for doing so.

John Hannah interview

John Hannah adds a touch of cliché to Charlie Brooker's new show.