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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	1
No. of episodes	6
Production
Producer	Ted Dowd
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	29 minutes
Production company	Baby Cow Productions Ltd
Original release
Network	BBC One
Release	25 February 2019 (2019-02-25) –  ()

This Time with Alan Partridge is a British television comedy series broadcast on BBC One. The first series was broadcast in early 2019. 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. Partridge's co-host is played by Susannah Fielding, and Tim Key and Felicity Montagu reprise their roles as Simon Denton and Partridge's assistant Lynn Benfield respectively. The series received generally favourable reviews.

A second series was filmed in 2020 and will air from 30 April 2021.

Premise

Partridge, 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, an inept broadcaster, 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 is the first BBC Partridge project following several Sky productions. It was produced by 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 the character's inception: "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, and said that Morgan 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".

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) 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."

Television host and former newspaper editor Piers Morgan, who is spoofed by This Time, said that "Steve Coogan is 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
• Alex Dee as Floor Manager

Guest appearances

Episode 1

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

Episode 2

• Peter Wight as John Baskell
• 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

Episodes

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 BBC1 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. "This Time with Alan Partridge to return with season 2 in 2021". Radio Times. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
6. "New series of This Time with Alan Partridge". BBC Press Office twitter feed. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
7. ^ 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.
8. 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.
9. "BBC One - This Time with Alan Partridge, Series 1, Episode 1". BBC.
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. 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. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8035404/?ref_=ttep_ep1
18. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9789982/?ref_=ttep_ep2
19. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9789982/?ref_=ttep_ep3
20. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9789982/?ref_=ttep_ep4
21. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9789982/?ref_=ttep_ep5
22. "Four Screen Viewing". BARB. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
23. "This Time with Alan Partridge - Series 1: Episode 1" – via www.bbc.co.uk.

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