Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of those ‘classic’ 1990s comedy characters funnier in recollection than ever he was in reality. He should have been confined to brief sketches — like Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield mostly did with their cheesy has-been DJs Smashie and Nicey — not cruelly exposed in endless TV series where you’ve got the joke in the first five minutes and the rest is pure cringe.
Actually, though, This Time with Alan Partridge (BBC1, Mondays) is genuinely funny, clever and enjoyable because finally he has scriptwriters who don’t hate him. For his original writers — Patrick Marber, Armando Iannucci and Peter Baynham — Partridge was little more than a spitoon in which to hawk all their metropolitan liberal prejudices about parochial, clumsy, racist, sexist Little England. As proper, successful, high-minded talents in grown-up TV and theatre, they looked down on Partridge, a loser in mere local radio who voted — ew — Tory. So there was never a need to understand him; he was there purely to be tortured like some disabled kid who has got it coming because he’s wearing a Maga hat.
The Marber and Iannucci approach to Partridge, Coogan told last year’s Edinburgh Television Festival, felt ‘a bit like pulling wings off an insect. It was fun but quite cruel’. But his new writers — Cheshire brothers Rob and Neil Gibbons, who’ve been developing the character since 2012 — have a much more sympathetic approach. ‘Although he’s a fool, they don’t want him to be destroyed, they don’t want him to fail completely. He’s well intentioned even if he’s wrong.’
This gives Coogan much more leeway to show off his acting talents. When Partridge becomes weirdly aroused by the sight of one of his studio guests soaping her slender hands in a public information video, the camera catches his tortured, pleading expression as he wrestles with his almost insuperable urge to say or do something excruciatingly embarrassing.
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