This year is the 30th anniversary of Alan Partridge’s first appearance on the BBC Radio 4 comedy On the Hour, making the character as much a part of the UK’s broadcasting furniture as those he was originally created to mock.
These were guileless sports reporters, self-obsessed magazine show hosts and Richard Madeley, mainly.
Alan has enjoyed success with 1994’s excruciating spoof chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You, and cult fly-on-the-wall infamy with I’m Alan Partridge (1997 and 2002), one of the best and smartest comedies of its time.
His creator Steve Coogan seemed to tire of him after that, though. Alan’s appearances dried up, and the 2013 film Alpha Papa seemed like a fitting swansong.
Enough to make a comeback
Even without the involvement of co-creator Armando Iannucci, however, there was enough fresh in 2019’s comeback BBC One series This Time with Alan Partridge to keep viewers coming back for more, and series two began last night.
A send-up of The One Show and Good Morning Britain’s predictable comfort telly, This Time follows their rigid format when the fictional cameras are rolling, even as things fall apart once they’re off.
Once again Susannah Fielding is Alan’s onscreen partner Jennie Gresham, sharing cosy jokes with the hapless, camera-hogging egomaniac on the sofa and ignoring him with barely contained malice offscreen.
Meanwhile, Alan’s long-suffering assistant Lynn (Felicity Montagu) has been charged with finding out whether Alan’s days on the show are numbered – could their final guest, Simon Farnaby’s suave, smug Sam Chatwin, be a better partner for Jennie in every way?
The clown gets all the attention
As in most straight actor/clown relationships, it’s the clown who gets all the attention, while Fielding does half the hard work setting up his idiocy.
In a world where Piers Morgan and Adrian Chiles are television hosts, Alan’s swaggering body language demonstration and desperation to cram in his grand finale seem somehow too forced, as though Coogan’s searching for a new level to dumb down to, when real television is already on the floor.
The best comedy here is in the subtlety; Alan’s breathless, grandstanding introduction, his potting shed run-in with some passive-aggressive monks, and his look of sheer, twitching terror when he senses an unexpected proposal might upstage his big moment.
He and Jennie are welcome back, but hopefully the rest of the series is a lot less predictable than the One Show.
Story of Scotland’s Dale Barclay
For fans of Scottish rock music and stories of tragedy which illuminate just how brightly a life was lived, meanwhile, BBC Scotland’s Dale Barclay: All On Black was essential, captivating viewing.
Barclay was the singer with and co-founder of Glasgow band the Amazing Snakeheads, who signed with Domino Records (home of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand) and released one album in 2014.
They made “serial killer rock”, says BBC DJ Vic Galloway excitedly, and we see plenty of raw footage which shows us just how great they were.
The band’s story, their rapid dissolution after an alcohol-fuelled injury and Barclay’s later life in Berlin with his wife and co-creator Laura is told in rich, myth-building style, through revealing interviews with his bandmates, Franz Ferdinand, Fat White Family and Laura herself.
It’s this deserved appreciation of Barclay’s brilliance as a writer and performer which intensifies the tragedy of his death from brain cancer in 2018, and really brings home the loss to this country of a wayward but unique talent.
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