Have you been following Top Coppers? If not why not? I didn’t think they could pull it off but they have managed to out-parody the much-parodied TV crime-busting genre, thanks to some shameless straightfaced over-acting and an absolute commitment to dreadfully obvious jokes. 

They certainly aren’t afraid of cliché. In more ways than one this week. Kayvan Novak pops up as master criminal Gerard Cliché. He’s French which, of course, means he wears a beret when he breaks into Justice City’s museum to pull off an Entrapment-style heist. Copper-topped cops Mahogany and Rust (Steen Raskopoulos and John Kearns) soon realise that the theft is the work of Cliché because he has left an incriminating onion behind.

If you can live with over-ripe gags and racial stereotypes like this you will probably already love Top Coppers. There’s also good value tonight from Rich Fulcher as the Mayor, plus a couple of equally dim rival female crimefighters (Lydia Rose Bewley and Jessica Gunning) and Adam Riches as Chief’s dead buddy Flanagan, killed in a butter-related shoot-out complete with gratuitous Afro.

In fact I’d have liked to have seen more of the elaborately quiffed Flanagan. But don’t tell the producers, they might make him a regular character despite the fact that he is dead. The stupidly brilliant Top Coppers is not a concept that relies rigorously on narrative logic. Thank goodness.

Top Coppers, Wednesdays, 10pm, BBC3.