Well, this is an absolute treat. We’re sat under the tarpaulin roof of The Unicorn Bar, drinks in hand, sunshine streaming through, and it’s the last day of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. But that lovely scene isn’t the treat I’m talking about. No — the real treat is that we have tickets to see Police Cops at the Gordon Aikman Theatre. These were the very first tickets we bought this year, deliberately scheduled to be our final show of the run.

You see, we first stumbled upon these guys back in 2018 when they were performing Police Cops in Space, a truly fantastic show that led us to their third outing, Badass Be Thy Name. We followed that up by helping to crowdfund Police Cops: The Musical (don’t get excited, we were just one of thousands), and it was worth every penny. But one thing still niggled: we’d seen all these shows, some of them more than once, but we’d never seen the original. The show that started it all. Until now…

There are essentially two final days to the Fringe. There’s the last Sunday, when most shows wrap up, and then there’s the official last day — the Monday — where only the truly committed dare to tread, while everyone else has already scarpered. And yet here we are, in one of the Fringe’s biggest venues, on this so-called “dead” day, watching the space fill up fast. Then the house lights drop…

For the next hour, we’re treated to one of the most riotously enjoyable pieces of comedy theatre I’ve ever seen. It takes every trope from every 80s and 90s buddy-cop movie and lovingly exposes just how gloriously nonsensical they are. The “special effects” are somewhere between MacGyver and Blue Peter — and yet somehow they work better than CGI ever could.

Yes, there’s a plot. Little Jimmy Johnson is trying to live up to his brother’s dying wish — for him to become “the best damn police cop ever.” Along the way he teams up with renegade veteran Harrison, a hard-drinking detective with a gun… but honestly, don’t overthink it. Just like the movies it spoofs, the best way to enjoy this show is to turn off your brain and go along for the ride.

  • Shameless nudity? Check
  • Random improv designed purely to corpse castmates? Check
  • An audience laughing until it hurts? Full house!

We can’t wait to see what clowns Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson and Tom Roe come up with next. Until then, we’ll just keep recommending their entire back catalogue.

Clown Stars: * * * * *

@Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh

If you would like to catch the Police Cops live you can find information on their future show dates at policecops.co.uk. If you enjoyed this review you may also like…