one4review | On 22, Aug 2025

The multi-award winningly hilarious and fantastic three-man team of Police Cops return for a tenth anniversary of their self-titled show and, if you’ll allow the pun it is criminally good.

The first of what has become a trilogy of stage shows covering everything from vampire hunting to space adventures, most recently recreated as a full musical which played at the Fringe last year, Police Cops is the story of a young boy, Jimmy Johnson who dreams of one day becoming the best damn police cop ever. Jimmy is partnered with a grizzled old veteran on the case of a lifetime to hunt down an elusive criminal, but in order to do so he might have to relearn everything it means to even be a police cop.

The plot is silly and fun, full of the standard cliches of 80s buddy-cop movies and their pastiches, but what really makes the show work is just the incredible amount of talent on display from the three leads. The jokes are silly but wonderfully innovative and each is executed flawlessly. Any chase or fight scene with actors switching between playing good guys and bad guys has pin-point choreography. The props are cheap and makeshift yet that only makes them better, somehow. The only word to describe the quality of this show is immaculate.

In the end, the only real crime is that this show – and these performers – aren’t already household names.

It is a gut-bustingly funny show that we are blessed to have returning again after ten years and we can only hope it’ll be back in another decade. If you’ve not experienced it before, you owe it to yourself to go along.

*****
Tom M
Gordon Aikman Theatre at Assembly George Square
17:25
25th