This Time With Alan Partridge Page 2

Tonight! Admittedly I'm inordinately excited and potentially setting myself up for disappointment but been looking forward to this for a long time.

From a piece about it in the independent today: "There is more in the tank, too. Filming will soon start on a different Partridge series, a Dimbleby-style grand sweep of British history in which he will "probably bite off more than he can chew"".

I'm sorry but this was truly awful , a character died tonight.

I've just watched episode one and while it's a far cry from the sublime Partridge that we all knew and loved some years ago, it's still amusing.

I'd liken it to a Comic Relief sketch: a quickly written bit of fun with a much-loved sitcom character but not a patch on the actual sitcom itself.

If Alan Partridge had never existed before tonight, I'd rate this episode as quite funny and showing promise.

The snag is, of course, that Alan Partridge has existed for many years and, at his best, was one of the finest comedy characters in the history of British TV. The film "Alpha Papa" was a pale shadow of the TV and Internet sitcoms and "This Time" is an even paler shadow.

I'll still be watching next week though.

I quite liked it!

It's never going to be as good as the earlier stuff though without Armando writing the scripts

Quote: lofthouse @ 25th February 2019, 10:11 PM

I quite liked it!

It's never going to be as good as the earlier stuff though without Armando writing the scripts

Good point and not forgetting Peter Baynham. Much as I loved both books IAP and the film, this seemed like a throwback to KMKYWAP, but not in a good way.

Saying that, we did laugh a fair few times.

Miss Fluck or Miss Clunt?

OH DEAR.........................

I didn't think it augured well with the awful "my mouth is dry" (Wha?) that they kept repeating and it seemed the signs were right.

Will, as I do with all things, give it one more week, but it needs to improve DRASTICALLY!!

Quote: Chappers @ 25th February 2019, 10:24 PM

Miss Fluck or Miss Clunt?

I remember an occasion in 1982 when I was having lunch at the BBC in Manchester with a producer, two actors and two actresses.

Somebody mentioned Diana Dors (whose real name was, of course, Diana Fluck) and one of the actors said "Diana Clunt?"

The producer gave him a disapproving look and nothing more was said.

I thought it was an absolutely brilliant joke and I've never heard it again since then, until tonight.

I wonder when Steve Coogan first heard it?

Steve Coogan plays Alan Partridge and while he may be able to do the mannerisms the total strength of the whole thing is in the writers hands. Prior to this I thought it was 60/40 but Coogan's inability to see how poor that was serves to shows that he just turns up dressed like him and says the words on the script.
If he was at least 40% he would have been able to spot how piss piss piss poor that script was. Don't kid yourself with fond memories either, these people were given 28 minutes on prime time TV and it felt tired cliched and was not funny and thats allowing for subjectivity.
I wanted it to be classic Partridge or at least have the strength of a Paul Calf script, but it never , it is clear to me that Partridge is the solely child of Armando Iannucci.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 25th February 2019, 11:21 PM

I remember an occasion in 1982 when I was having lunch at the BBC in Manchester with a producer, two actors and two actresses.

oooooh, did you ask them to smell your cheese?

Well obviously I'm a tiny bit massively biased, but I enjoyed that a lot. I think to compare it with IAP is unfair as it's a different medium. Here, Alan is under intense pressure and so his (many) flaws show through much more vividly. I must say that the 'Clunt/Fluck' line (actually the funniest bit was his reaction 'Ah, I see what I've done there') was a highlight, as was the whole 'hygiene' exchange. Partridge is so embedded in Coogan's bones that even the tiniest gesture is funny. I prefer this to those rambling docs for Sky. The only thing I wasn't such a fan of was the gag about the reporter constantly disagreeing with him, went on for too long