Gig review by Steve Bennett at the Brighton Fringe

The Pretend Men, the three-strong team behind the Police Cops franchise are adored by their fans. They get a rousing ovation on the last of six nights at Brighton Fringe, two of them in the Warren’s main 250-seat venue.

They are, indeed, electric performers. Their narrative show is energetically choreographed, and they don’t miss a chance to show off their tight moves – and even tighter torsos, honed in the gym.

For a daft spoof Police Cops In Space is, in fact, in grave danger of being too slick, given that comedy comes from failure and imperfections, not chiselled men performing with skill.  Perhaps wary of that, the trio of Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson, and Tom Roe allow some sloppiness into their performance, riffing with each other on how the show’s going, drawing attention to any improvisations or missteps, and occasionally struggling against corpsing. These peeks behind the curtain do a lot to endear.

This show, like its predecessor, is a big, brash pastiche of the machismo-driven US cop shows of the 1970s and 1980s, with the stupidity massively ramped up. The premise here is that Sammy Jones’s dad was the best damn Police Cop there was – until he was killed by a megalomaniacal, Australian-accented robot.  Twenty years later, Sammy’s a wastrel. But cometh the hour, cometh the hero, and as our killer robot seems on the verge of universal domination, Sammy must man up and defeat the powerful villain – as well as his own demons. Can he live up to the impossible expectations set by his father’s reputation?

It’s an ambitious, twisty narrative – and one with more Loose Ends than a hair salon mop – pulled off on a fringe budget. That’s a pretty well-established genre now, and there are certainly plenty of other troupes that pull this sort of cardboard-propped show off with greater invention,  so such a preposterous story, the humour is a little predictable, and not just because it leans on so many schlocky sci-fi/cop show tropes of the past. 

Yet some scenes delight, from an unlikely dance competition to the way they create the effect of a futuristic motorcycle. Plus the trio are lively, passionate performers and likeable behind the veneer of parody. 

Their shouty, melodramatic over-acting is monotonous for an hour – if they took their foot off their accelerator just once in a while, there would certainly be more texture to the show – but their vocal fan base certainly appreciates The Pretend Men’s supercharged energy. 

Review date: 22 May 2018
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton The Warren