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This Time with Alan Partridge
Genre	Parody
Written by	Steve Coogan Neil Gibbons Rob Gibbons
Directed by	Neil Gibbons Rob Gibbons
Starring	Steve Coogan Susannah Fielding Tim Key Felicity Montagu
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	2
No. of episodes	12
Production
Producer	Ted Dowd
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	29 minutes
Production company	Baby Cow Productions
Original release
Network	BBC One
Release	25 February 2019 (2019-02-25) – present (present)

This Time with Alan Partridge is a British sitcom first broadcast in 2019 on BBC One. It stars Steve Coogan as the inept broadcaster Alan Partridge in a spoof of current affairs programmes such as The One Show and Good Morning Britain.

After a series of productions with Sky, This Time was the first BBC Alan Partridge production since I'm Alan Partridge ended in 2002. Susannah Fielding plays Partridge's co-host Jennie, and Tim Key and Felicity Montagu reprise their roles as Simon Denton and Partridge's assistant Lynn Benfield. The series received generally favourable reviews. A second series was broadcast in 2021.

Premise

Alan Partridge, an inept broadcaster played by Steve Coogan, becomes the stand-in presenter of This Time after the regular co-host falls ill. According to The Guardian, the show features "Partridgean tirades on everything from hand hygiene (leading him to lurk outside the BBC toilets doing spot-checks on colleagues) to hacking".

Production

Partridge was created in 1991 by Coogan and Armando Iannucci. Following early Partridge shows such as Knowing Me, Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge, produced by the BBC, This Time was the first BBC Partridge project following several Sky productions. It was produced by Coogan's production company Baby Cow Productions, written by Coogan and the Gibbons brothers, directed by the Gibbons brothers, and produced by Ted Dowd.

Coogan felt it was the right time for Partridge to return, and that he might represent the views of Brexit voters. Neil Gibbons said the world of live television presenting had changed since Partridge had been created: "If someone fluffed a line or got someone’s name wrong or said something stupid, it was mortifying. But nowadays, those are the sort of people who are given jobs on TV." He likened Partridge to presenters such as Piers Morgan, who he felt had been hired to present Good Morning Britain because he said offensive things. Coogan and the Gibbonses ignored this because "if you put Alan in a world where his crass buffoonery is part of the selling point, there's nowhere for him to fall".

A second series was produced in 2020, and was broadcast on BBC One from 30 April 2021.

Reception

This Time with Alan Partridge has received mostly positive reviews. Lucy Mangan of The Guardian wrote that "the differentiation of This Time With Alan Partridge's layers and escalation of every exchange is precision-engineered: beautiful things and a joy forever." Tim Glanfield of Radio Times felt it was "some of the best Alan Partridge ever made". Sean O'Grady of The Independent gave it five stars, and found it "a consistently strong creative achievement". The segment with Steve Coogan as Martin Brennan (the Irish Alan Partridge lookalike who closes the show with Irish Republican Army songs) was described by Raidió Teilifís Éireann as "TV moment of the year", which would be remembered "in the canon of truly great Partridge moments."

Hugo Rifkind of The Times was less positive, saying "Only very occasionally does it soar into unexpected places. Still, for a character that came along a quarter of a century ago and still isn't old, maybe fresh delights are a bit too much to ask." Writing for Prospect, Lucinda Smyth argued "This Time is... OK. But it is not the best of British television, it's not even the best of Coogan, and it undermines both to say so... I don't mean to say that there haven't been a few gems in This Time. But overall the timing is patchy, the belly-laughs are few, and the script is tiringly Alan-centric."

The television host Piers Morgan, who is spoofed by This Time, said that Coogan was "trying to exact revenge on me because he now hates everything to do with newspapers... I used to love Alan Partridge, he used to be hilarious, brilliant. It is now utterly unwatchable. Because Coogan has disappeared up his derrière, unfortunately."

Cast

• Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge
• Susannah Fielding as Jennie Gresham
• Tim Key as Simon Denton
• Lolly Adefope as Ruth Duggan
• Felicity Montagu as Lynn Benfield
• Natasia Demetriou as Tiff (Series 2)
• Alex Dee as Floor Manager

Guest appearances

Series 1 (2019)

Episode 1

• Emily Maitlis as herself
• Cariad Lloyd as Alice Fluck
• Priyanga Burford as Jean Chaudhary

Episode 2

• Peter Wight as John Baskell
• Angela Curran as Annie
• Simon Farnaby as Sam Chatwin

Episode 3

• Jonathan Watson as Dale Daniels

Episode 4

• Monty Don as himself

Episode 5

• Ellie White as Dee Gilhooly

Episode 6

• Katy Wix as Susan Lyle

Series 2 (2021)

Episode 1

• Leila Farzad as Clarissa Hoskin
• Simon Kunz as Father Paul
• Simon Farnaby as Sam Chatwin

Episode 2

• John Thomson as Joe Beasley
• Colin Hoult as Howard
• Clive Hayward as Maurice

Episode 3

• Matt Smith as Dan Milner
• Nigel Lindsay as Tommy
• Rosie Cavaliero as Rosie Whitter

Episode 5

• Nick Mohammed as Bhavit Sharma

Episode 6

• Alex Lowe as Hugh Bevell
• Eleanor Matsuura as Professor Rebecca Burns

Episodes

Series 1 (2019)

Series 2 (2021)

1. Total number of viewers who watched on any device within 28 days of original transmission date.
2. ^ Did not rate in top 15 programmes on BBC One for the week, and so viewing figures were not published by BARB. This generally means viewing figures were below 4.5m.

References

1. Raeside, Julia (17 February 2019). "'We've had a love-hate relationship': Steve Coogan on bringing Alan Partridge back to the BBC". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 February 2019.
2. Holmes, Jonathan (25 February 2019). "'Mick Jagger, what do you think about otters?' Sorry, Alan Partridge –The One Show is beyond parody". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 27 February 2019.
3. ^ Warner, Sam (6 March 2019). "Piers Morgan hits out at Steve Coogan after new Alan Partridge series parodies Good Morning Britain". Digital Spy. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
4. "Steve Coogan brings Alan Partridge back to the BBC". BBC News. 26 February 2019. Retrieved 27 February 2019.
5. ^ Abbott, Kate (14 February 2019). "Part David Cameron, part Piers Morgan – Alan Partridge returns in time for Brexit". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
6. Connelly, Brendon (4 January 2013). "Richard Herring On Co-Creating Alan Partridge, His Rasputin TV Show And Dave's New Comedy Competition - Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors". Bleedingcool.com. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
7. "BBC One - This Time with Alan Partridge, Series 1, Episode 1". BBC.
8. "This Time with Alan Partridge to return with season 2 in 2021". Radio Times. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
9. "New series of This Time with Alan Partridge". BBC Press Office twitter feed. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
10. "This Time With Alan Partridge: Series 1" – via www.rottentomatoes.com.
11. Mangan, Lucy (25 February 2019). "This Time With Alan Partridge review – an excruciating white-knuckle ride". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
12. Glanfield, Tim (26 February 2019). "This Time with Alan Partridge first-look review: quite simply some of the best Partridge ever made". Radio Times. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
13. O'Grady, Sean (25 February 2019). "This Time with Alan Partridge on BBC1 is a consistently strong creative achievement". The Independent. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
14. "Watch: Alan Partridge just gave us the TV moment of the year". Raidió Teilifís Éireann. 19 March 2019. Retrieved 3 April 2019.
15. Rifkind, Hugo (1 March 2019). "TV Review". The Times. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
16. Smyth, Lucinda (15 March 2019). ""This Time" is not the best of British TV or Alan Partridge—and it undermines both to claim otherwise". Prospect. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
17. ^ ""This Time with Alan Partridge" Episode #1.1 (TV Episode 2019) - IMDb". www.imdb.com.
18. ^ "Episode #1.2". 4 March 2019 – via IMDb.
19. ^ "Episode #1.2". 4 March 2019 – via IMDb.
20. "Episode #1.2". 4 March 2019 – via IMDb.
21. "Episode #1.2". 4 March 2019 – via IMDb.
22. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9789983/?ref_=ttep_ep6
23. "Episode #2.5". 28 May 2021 – via IMDb.
24. "Four Screen Viewing". BARB. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
25. "This Time with Alan Partridge - Series 1: Episode 1" – via www.bbc.co.uk.
26. "This Time with Alan Partridge Series 2 Episode 1" – via www.radiotimes.com.
27. "This Time with Alan Partridge Series 2 Episode 2" – via www.radiotimes.com.
28. "This Time with Alan Partridge Series 2 Episode 3" – via www.radiotimes.com.

External links

• This Time with Alan Partridge at BBC Online
• This Time with Alan Partridge at IMDb

• 2019 British television series debuts
• 2010s British satirical television series
• 2020s British satirical television series
• BBC satirical television shows
• British parody television series
• English-language television shows
• Television series about television
• Fictional television shows