5 out of 5

Created By: Charlie Booker, Daniel Maier

Covers through season 2

‘In the grand tradition of…’ as they say, Airplane! and other ZAZ greats, there has been nothing to match the level of spoof presented by ‘Touch’ in the past thirty years… or since the last official ZAZ project.  Things have come close, or veered slightly off in to their own form of spoof, but the bold style of blending innocence with potty humor, visual gags, slapstick, wordplay, background gags, meta gags, and every other type of non-here’s-a-joke-and-punchline sendup with the ability to write a competent plot that actually has characters you can dig and a plot you can follow… it just hasn’t happened.  ‘Touch’ has the same rapid-fire quality, which means sometimes it misses, but that’s the point – it’s continual overload, every moment soaked with jokes you’re getting and not getting.

For 2 seasons so far of two episodes each we’ve gotten to follow ‘rogue’ cop Jack Cloth (Josh Hannah) through every cop/spy/detective show cliche, backed up by an equally straight-faced crew of funny named associates or thugs.  There’s literally rarely a second that doesn’t pass by without some element of humor stuffed in, and though some of the repeated gags wear on you (DI/DC Anne Oldman’s last name forever accented incorrectly), they eventually bear fruit or that wear serves its purposeful task of finally beating you into a smile.  I dare say ‘Touch’ even gets to one up its influences because it has that history to mine, as well as being on modern UK cable allowing for plenty of swearing and some good nudity gags (even the R-rated ‘Kentucky Fried Movie’ is pretty tame by modern standards).

What makes this work – and what every goddamn other attempt at the genre seems to forget – is that innocence is key.  A ‘making of’ was released for season 2 which underlines this notion, with the actors stating they’d frequently second guess a scene as to whether to insert some extra nods or winks, but were encouraged by series director Jim O’Hanlon to always play it straight; the style of humor works only in a bizarre, unaware vacuum – once you start pointing a finger at it, it becomes cloying.

Some of this will make you roll your eyes, some of it will have you rolling on the floor.  Some of it will make your jaw drop for how dense the humor goes – with several background gags running while the dialogue is dropping something, while some meta-nonsense happens as well.  Two episodes per season is smart, because there is a limit to how much of this you can take before your funny bone snaps.  But it’s such a joy to see the spoof throne finally reclaimed.