Touch Of Cloth - High Expectations

I really wanted to like A Touch of Cloth, like it a lot.  You know how it is, anticipation levels get hiked up so high that nothing can live up to the expectations. Think The Phantom Menace and go down a million disappointment notches.

That is not to say I didn't enjoy the show, it's just that I didn't laugh anywhere near as much as I thought I would. A few chortles, smiles, and knowing nods were all I could muster throughout the hour. This sort of  cop show spoof would be  both great and groundbreaking if Airplane!, Police Squad, the Naked Gun trilogy had never been made but sadly for screenwriters Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier they have.

Having moaned, A Touch of Cloth is much better than that whole Epic Movie, Date Movie crap. However, the dual problem with the scatter-gun joke approach is that a lot of the gags do not stick and we have seen so much of it we are usually ahead of the writers. But there was some good stuff in there. In fact A Touch of Cloth is far more involving and less daffy than SKY 1's Thorne of a few years back, now that was a funny cop show parody.

    

A Touch of Cloth is very well acted by Suranne Jones, although the Ann Oldman joke wore very thin, and especially John Hannah; who now with a Touch of Cloth nd his fantastic stint as Batiatus, has finally cleansed himself of that whole W.H. Auden / Four Weddings stink.

I'll watch the second part, but it will be with my expectations suitably lowered, who knows, I might enjoy it more that way.

Over  

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Update: The Armchair Assassins thought that the second part of TOC was pretty sluggish and that it might have been less painful all around if it was a 90 minute film. Some funny moments, but over two hours it did get a bit much.