British Telly

While Charlie Brooker might be best known by a wider audience for his science fiction anthology series Black Mirror, the English writer and satirist has a back catalogue that spreads far and wide. Amongst his writing credits on the likes of Brass Eye and Nathan Barley is a hidden gem, a satirical take on the detective genre, A Touch of Cloth.

Arriving a year after Black Mirror first aired on Channel 4, A Touch of Cloth was written by Brooker and Daniel Maier, who had previously worked on Harry Hill’s TV Burp. With the two comic writing masters behind the show, A Touch of Cloth sees John Hannah play police detective Jack Cloth, and Suranne Jones play his colleague Anne Oldman.

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“It’s a gag-packed spoof of dark British detective serials in the sort of Messiah, Wire in the Blood mould,” Brooker had once told The Guardian around the time A Touch of Cloth was being released on Sky One back in 2012. “The idea was to do something that was just outrageously stupid as opposed to dark or satirical.”