AHA!
‘I’m Alan Partridge’ is one of the most iconic British sitcoms of all time. It launched Steve Coogan’s career, and ranks highly among Armando Ianucci’s greatest creations.
We come bearing wonderful news for fans of the show. The character, who hosts ‘Mid Morning Matters’ on a local Norwich radio station, will be returning to our screens very soon, in a new show called This Time With Alan Partridge. The new show will be a magazine show, hosted by Partridge, with a similar set up to The One Show.
Speaking on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Steve Coogan revealed that it will air in February this year.
He explained how it will focus on Alan’s attempts to “get on message” as he becomes reacquainted with a BBC audience.
“What we do is we have him trying to jump on the bandwagon and say, you know, he says ‘Hey! I’ve made mistakes, I’ve stood on the side of the sidewalk and slow hand-clapped while I watch a woman try to parallel park, you know, and I feel bad about that. And now if I saw a woman doing it now, I would shout instructions’,” said Coogan.
https://youtu.be/y7zlVeZEbro
He continued: “He’s sometimes ignorant and prejudiced but he tries to do the right thing. Early on we made him too predictably conservative a bit like shooting fish in a barrel – a caricature. Whereas now we do him as someone who realises that he’s got to get on message. He’s struggling to do the thing he’s supposed to.”
Coogan also revealed that the new series will see Partridge tackle the biggest issues in current discourse, including the MeToo movement.
“Me Too – there’s a whole episode about that. That’s such a difficult topic for anyone to talk about for anyone to say anything about, but if you’re doing a character it weirdly gives you this licence to. You can get things wrong in a big way and it’s fine because it’s him doing it,” he said.
“You’re not sanctioning or agreeing with what he’s saying, you’re saying ‘this guy gets things wrong’ so you have licence to do it.”
Coogan added: “And this is the crucial thing, because you’ve got a comic character he can say stuff that you go, ‘that is so off message,’ but sometimes he can say stuff that’s true that I can’t say. So the fool can point something out that everyone secretly knows to be true.”
“You’re not saying that he’s right and you’re not saying that he’s wrong. It allows you to sprinkle a little humanity on arguments that are atrocious.”
https://youtu.be/UH1SPYM2Y9E
Basically, it sounds like I’m Alan Partridge modernised, which should be a barrel of laughs.
“The show itself is a heady mix of consumer affairs, current affairs, viewer interaction, highbrow interview and lightweight froth; very much the sweet spots for a man whose CV boasts over two decades of weekday local radio,” the BBC said.
