Longtime fan of all things Alan. Sadly, aside from the mighty “Come Out Ye Black and Tans!” episode was distinctly underwhelmed by S1 and very surprised SC brought the character back for another go-round.
Like all classic UK comic TV characters – think Tony Hancock, ‘Arold Steptoe, Basil Fawlty, Captain Manwairing and Rupert Rigsby – AP at his best is equal parts social climbing hubris and doomed-to-be-thwarted pathos. As indeed was Alan himself in the first and to a lesser extent the second series/season of I’m Alan Partridge.
In reviving and modifying the KMKY format in which Alan made his solo TV debut all those years ago, SC seems to have forgotten to remove the pathos that made AP such a wonderful grotesque to begin with. He’s also largely replaced his interactions with Felicity Montague’s magnificent Lynn in favour of the unfunny Tim Key’s Sidekick Simon.
While love the books and the various one-offs (Scissored Isle. etc), think SC really should have retired the character in series form after the excellent Mid Morning Matters.
Am sure there’ll be others here who differ…
I’m differing. He’s a great comic character that is now at the right age.
Yes, I thought mid-morning matters was probably the best Partridge show, along with the film. A small digital radio station, with a sidekick who’d been working on college radio (or whatever it was). It was believable that this is how he’d end up after messing up his attempt at a TV career, but still with hopes of things turning round. It also helped that Steve Coogan was now about the same age as the character and looked it.
I think the basic idea of This Time just doesn’t work. It’s meant to be a prime-time magazine show, like the One Show, I suppose. A programme like that wouldn’t use a long past it presenter brought back from languishing in provincial radio. The BBC uses its rising stars like Amol Rajan and Alex Scott for these roles. This is like seeing Dave Lee Travis brought back to mainstream TV – it’s hard to believe it would ever happen. The only convincing character is Jenny, who clearly can’t understand why Partridge is there, but smiles her way through.
Only a comedy I suppose, so I am over-analysing.
I think you’re spot on. There will always be moments, the using the toilet without touching anything sketch from the last series fircexample but This Time feels like he’s made it which he clearly never would. Didn’t watch last night but probably will just because its Partridge.
I liked the first series. Of course the situation is ridiculous, but it is a comedy, no need to have lots of realism. Haven’t seen (heard?) mid morning matters, but thought the film was pretty average.
Mid Morning Matters is terrific and very, very funny.
The best thing about TTWAP is his co-host, Jenny
The first series had chuckles rather than big laughs. Good lines sometimes, but other situations feel forced – mostly the stuff with Simon. First episode is series two was the same.
Alan has achieved what he wants, and is no longer stuck low down the order. He now has nothing to fight against.
There was talk last night of a new producer from E4 which sparked some Alan-anxiety though (particularly about the theme tune).
Well I was chuckling through it yesterday evening.
I’ve enjoyed pretty much all the stages of Partridge, though my favourite is the radio Knowing Me Knowing You. There are a handful of phrases from them which have worked there way into my internal dictionary of quotations, presumably baffling more and more people as the years pass, ‘There’s nice, and there’s nice, and then there’s Uncle Denis.’ ‘And you’re quite sure … that’s the funniest thing that happened?’
The more recent versions are ‘beautifully observed’, ‘brilliantly clever’ and so on, but rarely laugh out loud funny. Coogan’s readings of the two Alan Partridge books are superb though.
The audio books are magnificent.
Clips please.
Whole episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJKppAT2ckE
Hahaha 😝 Resident humourist. Did I spell that correctly @Mikethep?
Also, I’d like to clear up the myth that Beethoven was deaf. He wasn’t!!!! He just couldn’t hear through his ears.
Morrissey lied to us???
Watched S2, episode 1 and we were both chortling. Back of the net from us!
Thanks for posting the video. I think he’s still got it. Lots to enjoy there. There are parts of the show where you feel sorry for him, particularly when his main prepared item is undermined in a very unprofessional way. At the beginning he uses a mirror to jauntily practice his gestures and he quickly lapses into a cold, even stare at himself which is beginning to unsettle him until he is called to the floor, breaking him from that dark moment. Just a few seconds – but completely brilliant.
Cheeky Monkey is in the trailer for next week – which may be further evidence this idea is reaching its end, but then again… it’s cheeky monkey..
It was OK – I enjoyed the storyline which was a funny premise, but it didn’t make me laugh beyond a mild chuckle. The early stuff with Armando Iannucci is up there with Fawlty Towers, and what I really liked about it was it was a sharp parody of crap chat shows. ‘This Time’ misses all sorts of things they could send up about The One Show which they could have gone to town with but they don’t. I don’t really like the Gibbons Brothers writing of Alan- very clever but not as funny. Unlike music I’m a bit old school when it comes to TV and comedy so this is my kind of Partridge: https://youtu.be/gnFT2eQy_Cw
Gave up after fifteen minutes.
I found him quite embarrassing when I first saw him and haven’t bothered since. See also: Frank Spencer.
It has the odd comic moment but I think he needs to kill off the character now.
A Helicopter crashing into North Norfolk Digital when he was on air would leave a nice epitaph.
I fear that Coogan has given up and accepted that he’s trapped by this character, like Norman Wisdom still doing his falling over and yelling “Mister Grimsdale” into his 80s. I wonder if he’s planning to do what Chris Sievey wanted to do with Frank Sidebottom, and finally divest himself of Alan in public? Wouldn’t put it past him.
I met Norman Wisdom when he was in eighties. It’s true. He could still trip himself up.
No wonder The Jesus & Mary Chain wrote that song about him…
Don’t know about that, Coogan has been very successful in his other endeavours.
Not nearly as successful as he wanted to be (or from my point of view deserved). When he did character based live shows he was only too aware that it was Partridge that everyone wanted to see, and his film career never really took off despite a couple of significant successes.
The exaggerated version of himself that he plays in The Trip complains about the lack of recognition, being trapped in the iconic character that first brought him success and being unable to escape from him. He’s spoken for decades about wanting to kill off Partridge, or at least move on from him, but maybe he has finally made his peace with him.
Pretty successful I would also say. Acclaimed for Philomena, nominated for awards, also Laurel and Hardy movie. I think a lot of actors would like his kind of failure.
He’s rarely far from Michael Winterbottom’s films. He was great in 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story (also with Rob Brydon).
But none of this is the sort of leading comic man stuff of, say, Ben Stiller, which is where I imagine Coogan thinks he deserves to be.
His problem is that he is too good an actor. He inhabits the part. You can watch something like Philomena without realising it’s him.
You can’t say that about Ben Stiller.
For me, SC is a bit like Ricky Gervais in that he is a one-note actor at best. The only exception to the rule is Stan and Ollie in which he was terrific.
In other films I’ve seen where SC has starred – Philomena, Look of Love, Greed, he’s often been cast as real figures (or in the case of Philip Green, a libel-proof version of him).
Trouble is, he’s not got the acting chops needed to persuade you that you’re watching anyone other than “him from Alan Partridge”.
I suspect the reason why he was so good in S & O is that he was able to replace the limited bag of tics and tricks with which he brings AP to life with a convincing recreation of Stan Laurel. But at the end of the day it’s more a piece of brilliant mimicry (the field in which he started out), than a superb piece of acting.
Exactly, 2 Oscar nominations, success as a writer and has his own production company. Not too shabby.
Still a crap actor though.
It’s not that he hasn’t had other success – I think the need is more psychological. It’s like he can’t let go of it.
Probably my favorite bit of Alan – probably because I know someone who is called Dan (a bit of a see you next Tuesday)
I love all things Partridge, the TV, film, audio books & podcast are all brilliant. S2 Ep1 was a great start.
As someone said, comedy is more polarising than music, you [mostly] either love it or you don’t. There’s not a lot of grey area.
Well for those of us still arching this second episode was vastly better than the underwhelming opener.
The character has always traded on his social awkwardness but the only thing I have got from This Time is the uncomfortable feeling, unleavened by — what are they again? — oh yes: laughs.
As I wrote at the top of the page, the pathos that leavened AP’s delusional hubris has gone and with it most of the laughs. He’s also sidelined the always excellent Lynne in favor of the unfunny Sidekick SImon
I like the theory that Lynn isn’t actually there, as she wouldn’t be in the studio in reality, and only exists in Alan’s head as his personal support when he knows that everyone else despises him. It doesn’t quite work as there was a small interaction between her and Jennie in the first series.
I agree about Simon though.
Agreed on the humour vacuum that is Simon. Isn’t he played by one of the new writing team?
I think Simon is very funny. Alan Partridge is loyal to vulnerable people who don’t openly despise him, so it makes sense that Alan shares his good fortune in this way.
The radio banter in Mid-Morning Matters was wonderful due to Simon’s quick wit, often tying Alan jn knots, leaving Partridge no other choice than to “win” the exchange usually by saying something deeply personal and hurtful.
I’m probably overthinking this, but where this premise doesn’t quite work for me in that no TV company would put up with his inadequacies. It was totally feasible that he would be a washed up presenter relegated to the morning slot on some godawful local radio station trying desperately to climb back up the greasy pole, and the TV series and film set in that world were actually quite believable, so the humour worked, but I keep thinking ‘why aren’t you getting the sack’…!
No, that’s an asbsolutely reasonable observation. Comedy needs to based in reality, if only an internally logically consistent one.
I think you have to suspend belief a bit on that one, N
Aside from the fact that early evening mindless fodder like The One Show is effectively a parody of itself, what I find most disappointing about TTWAP is the fact that SC is just repeating a formula he did better in KMKYWAP all those years ago.
While stuff like his trying not to use his hands in the toilet from S1 of TTWAP was admittedly very funny, it didn’t depend on AP and would have probably been every bit as funny if in the hands of another comic actor.
I didn’t think it was at all bad, but if only Coogan could work with Ianucci, Baynham etc again.
The Partridge of ‘This Is Alan Partridge’ season one was comedy gold. In as much as that season was a satire of dreary late night regional radio – AP a dismal cipher in the midst of mediocrity.
Well I still think it’s great, in the same way I like Fairport Convention: the flower may have faded but there are still enough flashes of familiarity and bonhomie to make up for later and poorer decisions. This 2nd series of this era of Alan is way better than the first series and is no less unlikely than the One Show playing for longer than Wogan (on the telly) ever did.
KMKY(A) was certainly very clever and, more so, knowingly clever. As such it was always contrived over believable. His next phase at the Travel Tavern was and is my favourite series: entirely believable awfulness. The next one with the Russian girlfriend sagged a bit, to be fair. The odd little bits and bobs trod water, the youtube stuff was better and the series at Nort Norwich Digital had its moments. The film, Alpha Papa, was shite, but knew that and made the best of that knowledge.So that’s it, in a nutshell, with a quick nod to his radio and TV debut in On the Hour/The Day Today, where the promise was firmly founded.
Fotheringay are the band Fairport could have been.
I’m not sure if I’m joking.
I thought episode 4 was genius. Hatred, disposability, desperation and failure are now the Partridge tropes. I can see why it’s not everyone’s thing but at the risk of sounding pretentious I thought it absolutely nailed down scornfully ridiculous.
I think it has got better since Ep. 1. I haven’t seen 4 yet (Mrs. T hates Partridge), but 2 & 3 were terrific fun.
People quoting him all the time. That’s when I went off him. ‘Wings. The band the Beatles could have been!’ ‘Smell my cheese!’ ‘Monkey tennis!’ Oh, do fuck off.