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. On 15 February 2020, it was confirmed the show had been commissioned for a second series, set to air later in the year.
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 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 Partridges 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 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."
