Theatre review: Police Cops in Space

In an otherwise very quiet August as all attention is back on Edinburgh, there was no way I was going to miss the return of the team from my Show of the Year 2023: After the success of Police Cops the Musical which has (so far) played two runs at Southwark Playhouse, the writer-performer team of Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson and Tom Roe has gone back to their lo-fi roots: In what feels, given the late announcement, like it might have been plugging a scheduling gap at the Underbelly Festival, they've revived their 2017 show Police Cops in Space. This means just the original trio, minimal comedy props but actually quite a lot of comedy costumes - given Roe's almost complete inability to do the quick-changes without clattering onto the stage with his trousers halfway down his legs. This is not a complaint.

The musical was apparently based closely on the plot of the original Police Cops show, so this sequel actually follows easily on for those of us who only discovered the team last year: The original team of Johnson and Harrison have been killed by an evil, horny Australian robot (Roe,) and Johnson's son Sammy (Parkinson) has reluctantly taken up the mantle of Best Damn Police Cop in Space.

When the villainous robot returns, Sammy enlists rogue space pilot Rogue (Hunt) to take him back to Earth and get revenge. Obviously this isn't as slick as their most recent show - if nothing else it relies even more heavily on extended ad-libbing, so part of the show's charm this time actually depends on the cast corpsing and getting caught up in their own chaos.

Not that there aren't plenty of good comic sequences and one-liners in the scripted parts - there's Roe as a Terminator in a thong (also not a complaint) who fancies Sammy too much to actually carry out any terminating, and just imagines their lives together. He also plays a wise old janitor, who trains Police Cops, and whose girlfriend definitely isn't just a particularly attractive mop. There's plenty of call-back jokes to the earlier story (you'll be relieved to hear Alan is still available to cover shifts at the old people's home) and another crucial dance competition. It's also even more wildly homoerotic than the '80s-based story, by quite a margin. If you loved the musical (and why wouldn't you?) and go in knowing this'll be an even more chaotic affair, you won't be disappointed by the consistent level of big laughs.

Police Cops in Space by Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson and Tom Roe is booking until the 18th of August at Underbelly Spiegeltent, Cavendish Square.

Running time: 1 hour straight through.