Top Coppers

Creating and writing 'Top Coppers'

If you've seen Top Coppers on BBC Two recently, then you might be forgiven for thinking you had slipped into some kind of weird retro TV dream that looked like the 70s but had endless 90s references, with characters seemingly from all of the world, yet they live in a completely made-up place. And there's a hamster on a zipline. Co-creators and writers Andy Kinnear and Céin McGillicuddy are to blame for that.

Top Coppers, BBC3, review

And there are plenty of moments to enjoy here, from Rich Fulchers unashamedly sleazy Mayor protesting his innocence whenever he is caught with his pants down - which is quite often - to the sight of my old London university building doubling as Justice City's Town Hall (maybe just me on that one then).

Review: Top Coppers, BBC3

Have you been following Top Coppers? If not why not? I didn't think they could pull it off but they have managed to out-parody the much-parodied TV crime-busting genre, thanks to some shameless straight-faced over-acting and an absolute commitment to dreadfully obvious jokes.

Top Coppers: Introducing a new wave of comedy talent

For pretty much all of the regular Top Coppers cast, it's their first kind of big outing.

Pleasant surprise of the week came in the form of BBC Three comedy Top Coppers which I thought would be another awful offering to match the woeful Crims. Instead this loving pastiche of 1970s and 1980s cop shows offered some big belly laughs and some wonderful observational gags on top. Writers Andy Kinnear and Cein McGillicuddy have employed a high gag ratio but at the same time haven't forsaken the plot of the episode over getting cheap laughs. Meanwhile the cast seemingly realise that the best way to pull off a successful spoof is to play it dead straight and that's what most of them have done. Top Coppers is centred round the Justice City Police Department and more specifically Detectives John Mahogany and Mitch Rust (Steen Raskopoulos and John Kearns). Mahogany and Rust have a strong bond which looks to be tested when the former wants to go out with the new girl in the office rather than enjoy movie night with his colleague. This decision leads Rust to go to some extreme lengths to compensate for his loss which includes trying to recreate certain scenes from the movie Speed. The best recurring gag in the first episode for me involved the fact that gangster Harry McCrane (Paul Ritter) had recently purchased an ice cream factory meaning that the employees now had to produce both ice cream and drugs. Although at times Top Coppers may have been a little silly, I felt that it was one of the more tightly-plotted TV comedies that I've recently seen. More than anything Top Coppers was just very funny and that's more than I can say for most of the British sitcoms I've watched during 2015. I'm just hoping that the enjoyment that I garnered from the opening instalment wasn't a one-off and that Top Coppers will go down as one of my favourite comedies of the year.

TV review: Top Coppers

Not many series could go toe-to-toe with Leslie Nielsen's mighty Police Squad!, but this spoof of crime procedurals showed an attention to detail and mastery of sheer silliness to make even Frank Drebin crack a smile. Four stars.

A parody 80s cop show, borrowing tropes from both US and UK police series, with some amazing cameos and a script laced with mostly weak gags. The deliberately hammy style sails too close to Toast. You can feel the good intent bubbling under but failing to surface because no one seems able to hit their comic stride. Although the two leads are very likable and tonight's opener features the unbeatable Paul Ritter as their villainous arch nemesis, an ice-cream and drug distributor, it misses by a mile. A great shame.

John Kearns interview

The eccentric comic made his name at the Edinburgh fringe in a bad wig and rubber teeth - and he just wants to make people laugh. Starting with BBC Three slapstick sitcom Top Coppers.

TV review: Top Coppers

It doesn't match the excellent Brooklyn Nine-Nine for quick-fire sass, but Top Coppers could well be a grower in terms of undemanding distraction over the next five episodes.

How Top Coppers was written

As co-creators of new BBC Three comedy Top Coppers, Cein McGillicuddy and Andy Kinnear have spent the best part of a decade developing the fictional Justice City Police Department and it's two flame-haired cops, John Mahogany and Mitch Rust. As the series kicks off, the pair explain the show's back story and the many, many film and TV references you can expect to see in it.