A Touch Of Cloth

I love this! As a big fan of murder mysteries and crime dramas, this spoof, starring John Hannah as DCI Jack Cloth and Suranne Jones as DC Anne Oldman, had all of the elements of this type of shows and made them so obvious it was hilarious.

So much of it I really liked including the many puns that come out attached to names of Cloth and Oldman, the over-detailing of the murder victims, the amounts of police tape at one murder scene, the amount of blood and close up shots of the crime scenes used, and so much more.

One thing I really liked was the way the characters would say their stage directions at the end of a scene, the police on the radio mentioned the shots and the knowledge of the cutting of scenes. There was also a cardboard policeman seen as a character, which was good. The mystery of the murders was not intensely pressed upon me and I found that helped to find the spoof aspects around the victims, their relatives and the case quite funny.

I think some people who are big fans of the crime genre might have been worried about it not working, but this was so trying to a be spoof that it was so funny and it was good when I was able to identify the traits of the crime genre as they appeared throughout the stories. It had the typical character traits of Cloth being haunted by the ghost of his dead wife and Oldman's relationship collapsing due to her being at the office all hours.  I thought Hannah and Jones did a great job and their performances bounced off each other really well.

This was a great programme that gave a new light to crime drams and worked well to create a strong spoof.

Also apparently this was the first in the trilogy which I'm really looking forward to seeing.