overlaboured

In places it's a gripping tale, but in others the vague motifs and overlaboured flights of fancy become unnecessary distractions.

Debut fiction: Circus Bulgaria by Deyan Enev; The Seas by Samantha Hunt; Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph 2010

We have either become idle and neglected it, or tedious and overlaboured it.

Barchester Towers 2004

Fletcher, on the other hand, would appear to have made a very great effort; and though some portions of the work I ascribe to him are tedious and overlaboured, no censure would weigh very strongly against the fact, that for more than two centuries they have been _applauded_ as the work of Shakspeare.

Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 Various

His negros were a dull, feeble, half-starved, and overlaboured herd.

Uncle Tom's Companions: Or, Facts Stranger Than Fiction. A Supplement to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Being Startling Incidents in the Lives of Celebrated Fugitive Slaves. 1911

His mind, which, to use Murphy's words (Life, p. 80), had been 'strained and overlaboured by constant exertion,' had not recovered its tone.

Life Of Johnson Boswell, James, 1740-1795 1887

We have either become idle and neglected it, or tedious and overlaboured it.

Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope 1848

Rehashing an already overlaboured point just because it's topical again is neither clever nor entertaining.

The Guardian World News David Mitchell 2010