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I'm Alan Partridge is a BBC situation comedy starring Steve Coogan of which
two series of six episodes were produced — the first in 1997 and
the second in 2002.
The series followed the titular Alan Partridge, a failed television presenter whose
previous exploits had featured in the chat-show parody Knowing Me,
Knowing You... with Alan Partridge, and who is now
presenting a programme on local radio in Norwich.
Both series were written by Coogan, Armando Iannucci and Peter Baynham;
supporting Coogan were Felicity Montagu as his faithful,
mouse-like personal assistant, Lynn Benfield;
Simon Greenall
as Geordie Travel Tavern
handyman/BP garage attendant Michael;
and Phil
Cornwell as disc
jockey (DJ) Dave Clifton.
Characters
Both
series
- The main character of the series, Alan, a former host on
Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge on BBC television, was dismissed from the BBC
partly for punching Chief Commissioning Editor Tony Hayers in the
face with a stuffed partridge and partly because his programmes
were of a low standard, delivering ever-declining ratings. In
series one, he is divorced from his wife Carol, lives in the Linton Travel Tavern and is
reduced to working the graveyard shift on Norwich radio and desperately trying to get
back on television in any capacity.
- By series two — following an off-screen mental
breakdown — he has pulled himself up slightly, in that he lives
in a static caravan
next to the dream house he is building, has a radio show in the
evening, a military-based
quiz
show on digital television and has published
his autobiography. Alan is a generally
loathsome, narcissistic human being with very poor social skills
and a largely empty personal life.
- Alan's hard-working, long-suffering, personal assistant, Lynn
appears to run Alan's life to such an extent that he cannot survive
without her organisational skills; despite this, he usually treats
her with little more than contempt. Besides dealing with Alan's
working-life, Lynn's other duties range from the banal to the truly
ridiculous — accompanying Alan to visit a show home, buying
medicinal powder for Alan's fungal foot infections, cooling Alan with a
hand-fan, and frequently listening patiently to Alan's pointless
conversations and endless whining.
- Lynn is a member of a local Baptist church, which Alan finds strange but is
willing to tolerate. Her mother, whom Lynn possibly lives with, is
apparently housebound, but Lynn seems able to balance her life
between looking after her mother's affairs and those of Alan. When
accompanying Alan, Lynn is very shy and nervous in public, but
seems capable of easily blending into social situations when Alan
is not present. Despite her intense and frequently ludicrous
workload, Lynn receives a paltry £8,000 per year, due to Alan's greedy
penny-pinching.
- An all-purpose worker at the Linton Travel Tavern, Michael
speaks with a heavy Geordie accent, which Alan barely understands
(or claims not to) and, being Alan, never fails to demand
clarification. Michael is arguably Alan's only friend, and Alan is
glad of his presence when he needs to have a heart-to-heart or,
more often, inane chat; their friendship is clearly not on an even
basis, however, as Michael only ever refers to Alan as 'Mr.
Partridge' and Alan clearly regards Michael with a great deal of
disdain. Michael is almost as desperate and neurotic a character as
Alan, and is very emotionally disturbed (shown most clearly when
Alan looks out of his room window to see Michael tearing at his
hair in a state of some distress).
- Michael frequently tells stories of his time in the British army, to the delight of Alan,
especially if they are of a salacious, or violent nature. During a
period of military placement in the Philippines, Michael married a Filipino
woman, and the two moved back to Michael's native Newcastle
upon Tyne. However, his wife left him and now lives with his
brother in Sunderland, possibly shedding
light on the origins of Michael's neuroticism. In the last episode, Michael
appears at Alan's party already drunk on Scrumpy Jack and proceeds to insult the
other guests.
- He also appears in the second series of I'm Alan
Partridge, where he has left the Linton Travel Tavern and now
works in a BP petrol station.
- Dave is a fellow Radio Norwich DJ who runs the programme right
after Alan's "graveyard slot" show. During the handover every
morning, Alan always tried to engage in witty banter with Dave, but
their chatting fails to disguise the bitter rivalry between them.
Dave is an alcoholic
and has a driving ban, according to Alan. Much to Alan's surprise
and chagrin, Dave is a friend of Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley.
- Dave also appears in the second series, where he now
works the graveyard shift (after Alan's shift) and appears to have
resumed drinking - nevertheless, he still usually manages to get
the upper hand in his rivalry with Alan.
Series one
only
- The manager of the Linton Travel Tavern, Susan appears to be a
stereotypical front-desk worker, with a dazzling smile and sickly
sweet manner. However, even these forced skills are not enough to
deal with Alan's clumsy, half-hearted flirting and mindless
anecdotes. Alan frequently makes tactless comments to Susan about
her appearance (once suggesting to her that she "could have been
throwing up all night" but that her smile would not falter). In
reaction to these comments, Susan's painted-on smile is sometimes
momentarily replaced by a look of shock and bemusement.
- Susan displays a general dislike of Alan, becoming increasingly
bored of his feeble attempts at conversation as the series
progresses, and at one stage being terrified by Alan's
poorly-planned practical joke in which he dresses as a
zombie and creeps up on her at
reception.
Nevertheless, she never says a harsh word to Alan - at least, until
the end of the last episode, in which she finally tells Alan what
she thinks of him at his going-away party.
- A recently employed receptionist at the Travel Tavern, Sophie
is also rarely without a smile; however, in her case it is normally
because she is suppressing a laugh over Alan's antics. While Susan
brushes off Alan's social faux pas with a smile, Sophie is rarely
able to control her laughter at Alan's appalling lack of social
skills, and often has to leave reception to prevent laughing in his
face. Much to Alan's annoyance, he is sometimes aware that Sophie
often jokes about him behind his back.
- Ben is another member of staff at the Travel Tavern and
Sophie's boyfriend. Alan is jealous of Ben's romance with Sophie,
and does his best to sabotage their romantic trysts. In later
episodes, Alan attempts to forge a friendship with Ben, despite
Alan's earlier irritation at Ben's informal and somewhat laid-back
manner. Predictably, Alan's attempts to befriend Ben are clumsy and
unsuccessful.
Series two
only
- Alan's thick-accented Ukrainian girlfriend. Sonja (Cyrillic:
Соня), who is fourteen years Alan's junior, possesses a very
excitable, scatterbrained personality which leads Alan to describe
her as 'mildly cretinous'. Easily amused, she delights greatly in
pulling lame practical jokes and showering Alan with cheap (and
unwanted) gifts such as London
souvenirs and personalized
coffee mugs and cushions emblazoned with their faces. She is very
devoted to Alan and clearly treasures him, despite that he
demonstrates little genuine affection for her in return and clearly
bases their relationship solely around the ego-boost produced by
their fourteen-year-age difference.
Series
One
In series one, the former chat-show host Alan has been divorced
by his wife, Carol; has distanced himself from his children and
ended up living in the Linton Travel Tavern, a cheap motel equidistant between London
and Norwich. At this stage of his life, Alan's career consists of
broadcasting his own radio programme, Up with the
Partridge, on the fictional Radio Norwich during dead
time (4:30 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.), and occasionally making corporate
appearances for various low-profile local businesses. Alan's
personal life is shown to be crushingly empty; he has separated
from his wife, and his only interaction with other people consists
of chatting mindlessly to his personal assistant Lynn, the staff of
the Linton Travel Tavern, and receiving infrequent phone calls from
Bill Oddie.
Throughout the series, Alan displays his usual sexism, racism, homophobia, and general bigotry to everyone he comes into contact with,
and via his radio show broadcasts.
Two unusual plot devices used during the series surround Alan's
somewhat neurotic personal life.
One device consists of glimpses into his mind, depicting a
fantasy night-club, which Alan seems to think of often and at the
most inappropriate moments. In his club fantasies, Alan is a table
dancer, dancing for whichever television authority he aims to
please (usually Hayers, but also two Irish television executives he
meets on one occasion). Even in these fantasies, Alan retains his
unbearably boring and socially inept persona; he dances in a rubber
thong but this is offset by
wearing his jumper, shirt and tie in addition to his "erotic"
apparel, and in his fantasies, Alan launches into his trademark
dull and inane conversations.
The second plot device used throughout the series revolves
around a drawer in Alan's hotel room. The
viewers never see what is in the drawer, but the contents are
occasionally glimpsed by other characters; Lynn becomes speechless
when seeing the contents, Sophie bursts into a fit of giggling, and
Alan himself goes to extreme lengths to keep the drawer closed when
people are in the room.
Series one was first released on DVD in the United States on 24 October 2006.
Episodes
- 1. "Room with an Alan" — Alan and Lynn view a
show-home, where Alan displays his usual behaviour, and manages
both to confuse and to bore the estate agent. Later in the day, Alan
attends a luncheon at the BBC headquarters with Hayers (David Schneider), the fictional
programme commissioner of the BBC, about the possibility of a
second series of Knowing Me,
Knowing You. Apparently unaware of how low his chances
really are, he puts the nail in the coffin by desperately offering
a range of ridiculous, badly thought-out ideas for new programmes
that bore, bewilder, and eventually upset Hayers.
- These include "monkey tennis". When he is told that he
is not to be re-commissioned, Alan attacks Hayers with a lump of cheese and flees the restaurant
while shouting "I've got cheese, this is cheese!". After a
heart-to-heart with Lynn, Alan returns to his hotel room, attempts
to order an Irish
coffee, and gives himself a black eye while attempting an
athletic leap from his bed.
- 2. "Alan Attraction" — Without a second series
of his programme, Alan is forced to fire all the staff at his
company, Peartree Productions. However, when the staff ask him if
he has a second series, Alan panics, and tells them that he has
been successful.
- While the staff prepare a party, and Jill, his ageing,
chain-smoking, divorcee receptionist goes out to buy some snacks,
Alan tries to extricate himself by firing staff members for various
"offences" — leaving an unwashed coffee cup on the table; rolling
eyes, and being a woman. While he is locked in his boardroom, the
staff leave.
- Jill returns, wondering where everyone has got to (he tells her
they have gone to a spice museum) and the two go on a date to a
nearby owl sanctuary, where Alan's
attempts at conversation bewilder Jill.
- In the evening, the two attend a Valentine's Day dinner at the Travel
Tavern, where Alan makes a fool of himself by singing a song for
her with the hired band, and Lynn repeatedly attempts to sabotage
Alan's evening with the uncouth Jill. Alan and Jill return to his
room, and in one of the most memorable moments of the series, Alan
attempts to make love to Jill while providing a running commentary
and attempts a discussion of the pedestrianisation of the Norwich
city centre. After Jill's attempts at eroticism and Alan — covered
in chocolate mousse — Jill leaves and Alan goes to work, where he
tells Jill over the radio that she is sacked.
- 3. "Watership Alan" — After making various
unsympathetic comments about farming on his radio show, Alan
becomes an object of hatred for local farmers. But he does not have
time to worry about this as he is more concerned with shooting an
advertisement for a small boating-holiday company. In the Travel
Tavern's bar, during an initial interview with the video executives
(Peter Baynham
and Simon Pegg), Alan
panics and invents the ladyboy drink combination, the effects
of which result in him phoning his ex-wife Carol, where he tries to
insult her partner's car.
- On his radio show, Alan interviews the leader of the local Farmers'
Union (Chris Morris), but instead of
apologising, enrages local farmers even further by making
increasingly insane comments about farmers. On the day of the
video-shoot, Alan attempts to blend in with the hard-drinking crew
and again displays his chronic lack of basic social skills. During
the shoot, riddled with examples of Alan's pathetic ineptitude, he
is crushed by a dead cow thrown from a bridge by local
farmers.
- Alan returns from hospital with a neck brace and broken
fingers, and is forced to humiliate himself by phoning reception
and asking them to reconnect the satellite receiver on his
television which he had previously switched off because the staff
discovered he was watching pornography.
- 4. "Basic Alan" — There are major
refurbishments taking place at the Linton Travel Tavern, during
which the hotel is closed, leaving Alan as the only guest.
Throughout the episode, he is desperately bored and does various
things to pass the time, including dismantling a trouser press,
walking along a dual-carriageway to a petrol station to buy several
bottles of windscreen washer fluid, driving round the
ring-road three times, buying some tungsten-tipped screws he never
intends to use and dressing up as a zombie in a poorly planned practical joke. His
boredom culminates with an incompetent attempt to steal a traffic
cone, with Michael and Lynn.
- 5. "To Kill a Mocking Alan" — Alan hosts "An
Afternoon with Alan Partridge" at the Travel Tavern which is
attended by his self-confessed "biggest fan", Jed Maxwell. He is
also visited by network executives (Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews) who are
considering giving him a show on Irish television. Naturally, they
are less than impressed by Alan, though they do get along very well
with Lynn. Through a series of mishaps, the three of them end up at
Jed's house, where Alan finds out that Jed's fandom is of a
somewhat extreme nature.
- 6. "Towering Alan" — After a depressing
afternoon hosting a small village fayre and judging the vegetable
competition, Alan is delighted to discover that Hayers has died and
his successor, Chris Feather, is a man who had actually always
supported, and liked Alan. Attending Hayers's funeral (he knows
Feather will be there) he immediately snaps up the opportunity to
finally win his sought-after second series, but not before another
shock death threatens to throw his dream into tatters.
The series ended with a party in Alan's room as Alan and Lynn
tidied up to the theme from The Adventures of Black
Beauty, after all the guests have prematurely left. The
series ends on a surprisingly upbeat note, with Alan pretty pleased
with himself.
Series
Two
By series two, the viewer catches up with Alan five years after
he left the Linton Travel Tavern. Despite winning a five-year
contract at the end of the first series, bad blood between himself
and the BBC forced Alan to leave once again. He himself admits that
in the intervening time he'd been "clinically fed up", having a nervous breakdown which culminated in him
putting on a lot of weight and driving a Vauxhall Vectra to
Dundee in his bare feet whilst
gorging on Toblerones.
He also threw his tax receipts off of a ferry during what he
called "a low point" By the start of this series, he believes
himself to have "bounced back", titling his poorly selling
autobiography Bouncing Back.
As well as his book, he has Radio Norwich's third-best slot (his
rival from Series 1, Dave Clifton, again follows his show, but this
is now a 'graveyard' midnight slot), a military-based game show
called Skirmish on fictional cable television channel "UK
Conquest" and has released a video of car accidents entitled
Crash, Bang, Wallop, What a Video!
Alan now finds himself living in a static caravan outside his
partially built dream home. He is flanked by his friend Michael,
who has left his job at the Travel Tavern to become a cashier at a
local BP garage (this recalls Alan's odd question in the first
episode of the first series to the estate agent, when he asked if
there were any petrol stations near the house with minimarts -
"scaled down supermarket, fits inside a petrol station").
Alan now has two women in his life, not only is he still tended
to by his long-suffering and underpaid personal assistant Lynn but
he has a younger Ukrainian girlfriend, Sonja (Bullmore).
Episodes
- 1. "The Talented Mr Alan" — While visiting
Michael at the petrol station, Alan has a chance meeting with his
old teacher Frank "Sweaty" (or "Cacky") Raphael. Alan convinces
Raphael to let him give a talk to the sixth formers at the school
where Raphael is now headmaster.
- Whilst at the school, Alan bumps into an old schoolmate of his
who is now a teacher. They try to reminisce over old times, but
Alan still holds a grudge against this schoolmate, who once drew a
penis on the back of his school blazer in chalk; Frank Raphael had
caned Alan for this prank.
- Later Alan begins his talk to the students which, of course,
all goes wrong. Alan ends up insulting Raphael for caning him when
he was younger and also insults his schoolmate for "getting the lab
assistant pregnant, and never sees the kid." All of this results in
Alan receiving a stern talking-to in the headmaster's office.
- Towards the end of the episode, the reviled schoolmate comes
into the petrol station; Alan, thinking he has come to fight, tries
to threaten him with an apple turnover. The schoolmate apologises
to Alan and hopes that they can be friends again, but as the
schoolmate leaves the petrol station a customer tells him that he
has got something on his back: Alan got Lynn to draw a chalk penis
on his back.
- The episode ends with Alan being besieged in the petrol
station.
- 2. "The Colour of Alan" — Michael comes to
stay for a few days after his front door is stolen; Alan is asked
to present a sales conference for "Dante's of Reading," a company
that supplies coal-effect fires and fireplaces. Dante's Piet Morant
(Steve Brody), a South African, visits Alan's partially built
house.
- Whilst Alan buys time, taking Piet for an hour-long pub lunch,
Lynn and Michael improvise some make-shift furniture in the empty
house: they balance a toilet door on a Black & Decker Workmate for a
table and attach several torches to a bicycle wheel for lighting.
This fails to impress Morant, who is even less impressed by Alan's
attempt at a South African accent.
- Nevertheless, Alan is awarded the job, but tragedy ensues when
Alan tries to climb over a country club's fence and impales his
foot on a metal spike. Lynn tells him to stay in hospital but Alan
is completely adamant about doing the speech for "Dante's of
Reading." Unfortunately, his vomiting and foot pain turn his speech
into a disaster.
- 3. "BraveAlan" — Alan makes a new friend at
the BP garage, Dan (Stephen Mangan). They both like the same
beer, use the same deodorant, and drive Lexi ("the plural of
Lexus").
- Dan owns "Kitchen Planet" and arranges for Alan to present the
Colman's Mustard Bravery Awards. Alan's attempts to converse with
Karen Colman are hugely unsuccessful; he even admits to her that he
had mental health issues. She strikes up an instant rapport with
Sonja, however, later inviting her back to her house without
Alan.
- On hearing that the Colmans' family motto is "Too much mustard
gets up your nose," Alan tries to impress her by eating a big
spoonful of mustard.
- Later, at Dan's home, Alan finds out that Dan and his wife
enjoy a deviantly spicy lifestyle; to his great discomfort, they
show him a tape of them having intercourse.
- 4. "Never Say Alan Again" — Alan plans a Bond-athon for the bank holiday weekend
with Michael. Lynn reveals to Alan that she has a new friend,
Gordon, an ex-policeman who threatens Alan for mistreating Lynn at
times.
- The Bond weekend all goes pear-shaped when Lynn accidentally
destroys his Bond movies after spilling Sunny Delight over them. Alan is about to
give her the full force of his anger when Gordon stands up next to
her: Alan panics, backs down, and gives her a cash raise and tells
her not to worry about the videos.
- When he discovers that Michael has another friend, Tex (Peter
Serafinowicz), he becomes jealous and falls out with Michael,
un-inviting him to the Bond-athon. Alan targets John the builder
for his new friend/protector-from-Gordon. After patching things up
with Michael, Alan discovers that Tex has taped over the one
undamaged Bond film with an episode of "America's Strongest
Man."
- Because of this, he declares himself "Norfolk's Maddest Man"
and decides to give the group a physical run-through of the entire
opening sequence of The Spy Who Loved
Me.
- 5. "I Know What Alan Did Last Summer" — The Inland Revenue
are due to call and carry out a random investigation on Alan's
business affairs, causing him to worry. The Inland Revenue people
arrive earlier than the set time, catching Alan dancing around in
his caravan to Gary
Numan's "Music For Chameleons".
- During the investigation, Alan makes a fool out himself several
more times, including trying to walk like R2-D2, raising his legs, and accidentally farting
right next to the Inland Revenue people. This leads to him having a
minor argument with Sonja, which is all seen by the tax people. In
order to make things up to her, he takes her to Bono's house (really Blickling Hall), after falsely claiming
to be a personal friend of his. Lynn also gets a friend of hers
from the Baptist Church to pretend to be Bono, even giving him her
mother's cataract glasses
to wear in hope that Sonja would be convinced he is Bono.
- Alan is rumbled by Sonja and by way of apology for the
deception and for stabbing a giant teddy bear beefeater
that Sonja bought him (with a receipt spike; on entering the static
caravan, he mistook the bear for a burglar), he grudgingly consents
to take her to London.
- 6. "Alan Wide Shut" — The building work on
Alan's house is finally complete and Sonja is angling to cohabit.
Alan however, has other ideas and tries to "come to some
arrangement" with her. He is interviewed on a radio show called
Prayer Wave, where his insensitive comments result in one of the
guests (Julia Davis)
walking out.
- After this, he attends Lynn's christening at her church where
he simulates blowing his head off with a shotgun and assaults one
of the guests (Rob
Brydon) who questions Alan's anecdote-writing ability.
- Meanwhile, with "The Windmills of Your Mind"
playing on the soundtrack, the remaining 14,000 unsold copies of
Alan's book, "Bouncing Back," are pulped. Alan takes some away with
him in a plastic bag as mementoes.
Geography
All the places name-dropped in I'm Alan Partridge are
real locations in East Anglia.
Linton and Longstanton are in Cambridgeshire,
though neither has a Travel Tavern nor a spice museum.
Exterior shots of the Linton Travel Tavern were actually filmed
at the Hilton Hotel on Elton Way in Watford. Spalding is in Lincolnshire; Swaffham is a market town in
Norfolk, Spixworth and Hemsby are real Norfolk villages
which feature in the show as the home location of phone-in guests.
Sprowston, a real
village just outside of Norwich, is mentioned in the episode
Never Say Alan Again in a conversation with John, Alan's
builder.
The (Great) Ouse and the Waveney are major rivers, as
referenced in Radio Norwich's ident. Linton really is equidistant
between London and Norwich (about 95 km (60 miles) in each
direction). Due to the coverage, a number of Norfolk residents are
not happy with the association.[1]
Tiptree is mentioned in
Radio Norwich's ident even though it lies in the heart of Essex. On a similar vein,
Felixstowe is also mentioned even though it is in East Suffolk.
Film
adaptation
Coogan resurrected the character in his stand up shows in 2008,
alongside some of his other old characters, such as Paul
Calf.[2]
Also, in a recent interview, Coogan confirmed that Partridge
would return for either a film or a television special.[3]
See also
References
External
links
Wikis
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