This Time with Alan Partridge Episode 1 Review

Original air date: February 25, 2019
Directors: Neil Gibbons and Rob Gibbons
Writers: Steve Coogan, Neil Gibbons, and Rob Gibbons

Rating: 8/10

I wasn’t sure I’d ever see a return to Alan Partridge on television. And even if there was one, I wasn’t so fure it would be in this capacity, where Alan himself plays a character on television, as he’s a sort of last-minute replacement for a television show in which one of the hosts has fallen ill.

It’s presented with a behind the scenes look, as we don’t just see what would be aired on television, but we hear the banter of Alan and Jennie Gresham (Susannah Fielding) as the TV audience would see pre-taped segments.

Their first interview goes poorly, as Alan feels the need to compare seals to German U-boats, and criticizes his interviewee for giving a seal the name Silas rather than a “better one” like Richard.

But the interview truly goes off the rails when Alan starts going off script and talking about his grandfather leaving him when he was a kid. And then he gets Alice Fluck’s name wrong, calling her “Alice Fuck.”

Lynn shows up and talks to him during a commercial break. She thinks that Jennie is destroying his power by stealing his jokes.

One of the best things about this series is when the show highlights live tweets about the show, with one person correcting Alan’s reference to the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, and another woman saying it’s wonderful to see him back on TV. Which it is. Admittedly they don’t do that much funny stuff with this in this episode, or at least not until Alan goes over to Simon Denton (Tim Key), his longtime North Norfolk Digital partner, who struggles with the technology to show us the live tweets.

It’s incredibly awkward and wonderful.

There’s then an incredibly awkward pre-taped segment of Alan talking about hygiene, with his signature terrible wordplay “Pole dancers from Lapland or lap dancers from Pole-land (Poland).”

He initially meets people outside a restroom and asks them if they’ve washed their hands, which is funny. He eventually speaks with a woman named Jean “Hi, Jean/hygiene” who has filmed an instructional video on how to wash your hands. Alan is distracted by the creaminess of her lather, and struggles to concentrate.

It’s a bit awkward, and it’s one of my least favorite parts of the episode. I do like some of his awkward comments, though, like when she says that you’re supposed to wash your hands for 20 seconds, and he interjects “15 is fine.”

Alan then demonstrates in the studio how to use a public toilet without having one’s hands touch any dirty surfaces. It’s pretty funny.

Alan and Jennie then interview a woman on gambling, and it’s a woman whom Alan had previously spilled shandy on, and he points out that she’s since disagreed with everything he’s said, which extends into this interview, in which she constantly corrects him over even trivial differences.

The best segment of the episode is when Alan interviews an anonymous hacktivist and it doesn’t go well. He challenges Alan, whom he’s hacked. The interview goes poorly when Alan exposes his real identity and he walks off, but Alan follows him.

It’s incredibly awkward and quite funny, particularly when they run into BBC presenter Emily Maitlis, who, not even caring, manages to do his job better than him.

The episode is quite funny, but it still leaves you wanting a bit more. There are a few lines here or there that kind of reference how both out of place and necessary Alan is with the current times, and I’m looking forward to seeing that expanded upon.