TV Review This Time

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BBC 2019 – Spoiler alerts Having negatively criticized one new comedy show, the abysmally unfunny Warren, I’ll now write about a terrific new one, This Time, featuring Steve Coogan in his best known persona, the hilariously inept well meaning bigot, Alan Partridge. Partridge began as a recurring sketch character, a cringeworthily incompetent sports commentator / reporter on a BBC Radio Four show, On The Hour. Later, he returned as a TV chat show and magazine programme host before being relegated to local radio in Norwich, but egotistical and vain enough to consider himself worthy of A-List celebrity status. Partridge tries to be an expert on subjects beyond his ken and people who baffle him, and ends up embarrassing himself enormously. His persona has echoes of real media celebrity presenters including Richard Madeley and Piers Morgan, trying to seem hip and down with the kids while hopelessly out of touch. Coogan has given Partridge movie outings, especially in the brilliant Alpha Papa, about an armed siege at his Norwich radio station. This Time sees Partridge return to TV, in character as much as in the guise of Steve Coogan. He is now a temporary stand in for an absent due to illness anchorman on a TV show called This Time, with elements of the dreadful and all too real One Show and early morning live TV magazine shows. Partridge finds himself playing sidekick to the vivacious regular presenter, played by Susannah Fielding, as monstrously insincere and yet hyper-efficient. She rudely cuts over Partridge and shamelessly steals his best lines as her own. The highlight of the opening episode is Partridge challenging a masked for anonymity computer hacker who has even hacked into his computers, by producing a mask of his own, of the actual face of the hacker trying to hide his identity. Priceless. The Youtube is from an Earlier Partridge appearance when he tries exposing a notorious London Gangster until the man’s threatening tone reverses his entire position on the matter. Arthur Chappell