A Touch Of Cloth. Image shows from L to R: Jack Cloth (John Hannah), Anne Oldman (Suranne Jones). Copyright: Zeppotron
A Touch Of Cloth

A Touch Of Cloth

  • TV comedy drama
  • Sky One
  • 2012 - 2014
  • 6 episodes (3 series)

Spoof crime drama following a series of murders and the emotionally stunted detective investigating them. Stars John Hannah, Suranne Jones, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Navin Chowdhry, Adrian Bower and more.

  • JustWatch Streaming rank this week: 1,592

Press clippings Page 2

John Hannah interview

John Hannah talks about the third Touch Of Cloth show.

Nick Fiaca, TV Choice, 5th August 2014

Suranne Jones interview

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

Stephen Kelly, Radio Times, 30th July 2014

9 things you need to know about A Touch of Cloth 3

Here are just a few things we learnt from the spoof cop show screening...

Tom Eames, Digital Spy, 30th July 2014

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.

Gabriel Tate, Time Out, 1st September 2013

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.

Aidan Smith, The Scotsman, 1st September 2013

TV Review: A Touch Of Cloth II

All in all, this excellent second installment didn't look like an attempt to ride the coattails of the first. The script is second to none and if this was a first draft that required no re-writes than someone should already be making room for their BAFTA.

Matthew Laidlow, Culture Jam, 26th August 2013

A Touch of Cloth 2: As wonderfully bonkers as ever!

The gag rate in A Touch of Cloth can actually be exhausting. Visual gags, rhyming gags, Cloth gags and mocking gags are in abundance here, but the brilliance of the script means that you never lose sight of the crime story at the centre.

Natasha Sporn, The Custard TV, 26th August 2013

Review - Sky1's A Touch of Cloth II: Undercover Cloth

Thankfully, I found Undercover Cloth a more satisfying hour of silly comedy than its predecessor.

Dan Owen, Dan's Media Digest, 26th August 2013

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.

Jack Seale, Radio Times, 25th August 2013

Another two-parter for Charlie Brooker's spoof crime procedural; this second run displays similar strengths and weaknesses to the first. A Touch of Cloth is clearly in thrall to the Police Squad! and Airplane! school of comedy - not necessarily a problem in itself, but gag density has to be matched by gag quality otherwise things can become a touch wearing. The endless self-referentiality becomes tiresome too - do we really need a character moaning; 'I don't have time for a subplot now'?

On the plus side, Brooker's endless familiarity with TV's past occasionally leads him to strike gold: the funeral of Todd Carty, which features Pete Beale from EastEnders and Grange Hill alumni Roland Browning and Mrs McLusky, is sure to tickle viewers of a certain age. But ultimately - and oddly, given that he remains such a funny writer on the page - it feels like Brooker might be best suited to the darker, more serious end of TV drama. Black Mirror certainly hasn't been without the odd laugh, but it's usually humour of the bleakest kind. More of that please.

Phil Harrison, Time Out, 25th August 2013

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