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Alan Partridge has been with us for twenty-eight years now. We've seen his journey from the hapless sports reporter of On The Hour and The Day Today, through to his chat show heyday of Knowing Me, Knowing You, and back down to a graveyard slot in Radio Norwich (and living in a motel) in the incomparable I'm Alan Partridge.
Recent years have seen a biography (I, Partridge:We Need To Talk About Alan), a movie (Alan Partridge:Alpha Papa), a series of YouTube shorts (Mid Morning Matters), and a documentary about Britain's class divide (Scissored Isle).
But, his new series, This Time With Alan Partridge marks (perhaps surprisingly) his debut on BBC One. Cometh the time. Cometh the Alan. With Brexit providing motormouths and idiots with their biggest platform for decades (just witness Mark Francois, Boris fucking Johnson, and Marcus Fysh's current profiles) it seemed only right for Alan Partridge to be given a big gig, speaking for the disenfranchised, the dinosaurs, and the dimwits and taking it to the elite. Whoever they might be.
Of course, there are already plenty of (supposedly non-comedic) figures in the mainstream already providing this service. Think Richard Madeley, think John Inverdale, and think (but not too hard, it'll upset you) Piers Morgan. It's not so much that Alan Partridge's current iteration is a combination of their gormless, mugging, and self-obsessed styles, more that they've aped Alan Partridge - except they're real and, in the case of Morgan, far more horrific.
The premise is that Partridge has been called on to co-present early evening show This Time (it's The One Show with a side of GMB, basically) along with Jennie Gresham, played by the brilliant Susannah Fielding (and not just because she has amazing hair and great clothes, that's just a personal observation of mine). Then, on the death of regular co-host John Baskell, he miraculously manages to secure the gig for an entire series.
Whilst his role as Brexit mascot is never explicitly stated (or even mentioned) in every other respect he is very much your Daily Mail reader's idea of a TV presenter. He's getting on a bit now, witness his doddery anecdotes about his grandad and school kids being hit over the head with dusters as well as bizarre asides about Minstrels, Penguins, and his Matalan card, and his attempts at keeping up with modern mores are as woeful as they are perfunctory.
He boasts of listening to Woman's Hour, refers to make up 'operatives', and sings in a mixed vocal harmony group called The Quavers but at all times he makes it very much about himself. Interrupting women guests to tell his own story of being sexually harassed (he was coerced into brushing a woman's hair and when he refused he was overlooked an opportunity to meet Princess Anne), on announcing Baskell's death extemporising a lengthy and pointless monologue about a Hornby train set and a baby sparrow, and namedropping ("as anyone who's played squash against Adrian Chiles will tell you") not just at the merest provocation but often apropos of nothing.
He's clearly uncomfortable around a gay fashionista, a Nigerian guest, and the hilarious Irish Alan Partridge lookalike who tries to sell him a tortoise and launches into some IRA rebel songs about the Black and Tans. Yet he sucks up to Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis when he bumps into her in a lift. He has both the manner and the beliefs of a crazed conspiracy theorist who won't leave you alone when you're trying to have a quiet drink down the pub.
There's no doubting Partridge is a genius comedy creation but, for me, he works best when he's more nuanced or errs towards the surrealistic. The slapstick (having wind, bloated lips) and the full on cringe stuff can fall a bit flat (though Coogan/Partridge does a pretty decent giraffe impression) and it's in the knowing winks, tics, corrections, and unexplained grievances (a mention of the World Health Organisation is cause for a "here we go" interjection) that make up the confused, scared figure that is Alan Partridge 2019.
He misreads the autocue, he says inappropriate things, he struggles with social media, when his poor jokes fall flat he explains them, and he constantly gets people's names wrong (Alice Fluck is, of course, Alice Clunt). He has a weird way of ending sentences and saying particular words (inception, period, activity, guilty, authority, physiology) by affecting a slightly different pitch in his voice and he holds countless minor, and major grudges.
Noel Edmonds, of course, is a long term bete noire but Noel's been joined, for this series, by Caitlin Moran, Monty Don (who proves to be a good sport during a fairly abysmal, and not particularly funny, skit about a 'sting' Partridge attempts on him as an act of revenge for some perceived slight), and the whole of Scotland, dismissed offhand as hopeless lushes permanently pissed on whisky.
Coogan (who's co-written this series with the Gibbons brothers, Rob and Neil) has always had a great way with a non-sequitir, a mixed metaphor, or a totally bonkers observation. Partridge will, out of nowhere, riff on his spin classes at David Lloyd in Norwich, appearing in a 'So You Want To Work For Halfords?' event back in 1999, or boast that he eats 8kgs a week ("roughly equal to a very fat baby") and dreams of eating a ham prostitute called Bianca. What does "an overwhelming sense of Gary Numan" even mean?
Who cares? It sounds funny - and it sounds like the sort of thing Alan Partridge would say. You'd also expect him to talk about "breeding like angry Catholic rabbits", to describe, a discomfort with his own latent and denied homoerotic desires, is a Partridge trademark, a "smooth, fat teenage boy", and, when learning about the history of foul language, to slip in the phrase "let's hire some Albanians to fuck him up".
It's the attention to detail (and then getting that detail a bit wrong) that makes the character. You can picture the scene as sidekick Simon Denton (a slightly underused Tim Key, according to my mate Darren) relates a tale of Alan using his old "ahaa" catchphrase to try and get into the Johnnie Walker tent at Silverstone, you can appreciate Coogan's broad cultural frame of reference when he suggests to co-host Jennie that they could have "lasagne once a week" or, if she'd prefer, "fish'n'chips at the Cenotaph with a couple of cans", and you'll want to hide behind a cushion when he tells her "I'd like to tickle you(r) pink".
Aside from references to Spear and Jackson garden trowels and oddball comments like "I recently abseiled down the side of The Shard for charity. Or was it a dream?", Coogan is ably assisted by not just Fielding as Gresham but Key as Denton too (coming more into his own as the series progressed).
Felicity Montagu as the ever reliable, and always unappreciated and put upon, Lynn is a little underused but Lolly Adefope, as roving reporter Ruth Duggan, is a great addition as Alan's nemesis, refusing to agree with him on one single thing and cutting him down to size at every given opportunity.
Guest appearances by Simon Farnaby and Ellie White pay dividends too but it's Partridge himself you can't look away from. A car crash in slow motion that just keeps happening. He himself says, on the death of Baskell but it could just as easily refer to his entire career, "what we're watching is essentially live grieving" which is only odd because that shouldn't be as funny as it is.
It's awkward in places, stilted in others, but as a series This Time With Alan Partridge was pertinent, timely, educational (well, you could learn a tiny bit about John Snow, cholera, the Peasants's Revolt, and, er, euphemisms like beard-splitter and arse-opener), occasionally political (it felt more like Coogan talking than Partridge when a critique of Shell and Esso was delivered), and, most importantly of all, it was funny. Even if we never did get to see Julia Bradbury looking at some geese.
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