put a gloss on

The world champions were in town and England had one game to put a gloss on a pretty patchy autumn campaign.

Yaroshenko said a big problem was the reflexive, long-standing tendency of regional officials to put a gloss on local statistics to avoid getting into trouble with their superiors in Moscow.

Since Mr. Johnson’s victory, he has used the Global Britain label mainly to put a gloss on a bureaucratic decision: merging two government ministries, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development.

Leading Brexiteer Steve Baker said the government appeared to have put a "gloss on something that falls short", but he looked forward to reading the full text.

To put a gloss on even standard scripted fare, there are heavily promoted “cross-over” episodes for sibling series such as NBC’s “Chicago” dramas and CBS’ “NCIS” spinoffs.