Close Case : Affaires classées

What works are the running jokes, parodies on crime genre clichés and dialogs. What doesn’t work is the frequency of the gags. Every scene is literally full of attempts at humor at all costs, in every sentence and in every shot. And this means that much of the “humor" falls flat or is just embarrassing. This said, if you watch five minutes of this you get more stomach-hurting gags than you can count. Mainly and primarily, this is a reincarnation of the classic, non-fecal parody (maybe the first good one since Garth Marenghi's Darkplace eight years ago) and thanks very much to the Brits for that. Season two seems to be about something slightly different (this time the creators target all the tough crime series about undercover cops, especially taking the mickey out of Jack Bauer), but it retains the same good and bad points as season one. One unarguable advantage is that some gags are developed upon and that the creators never repeat old jokes and ideas. P.S.: If you don’t feel completely at home with British English, you probably should avoid this; you would miss the vast majority of puns (almost every other line is at very least a double-entendre) and jabs and that would be a shame because they are the best part. (19/11/2012)