I'm Alan Partridge - Sidetracked by a Need for Laughs

In On the Hour and The Day Today, the character of Alan Partridge is introduced as a bumbling, easily exasperated sports reporter. The audience gets a more focused look at him with his "failed" chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge, but the character does not really come into his own until the sitcom I'm Alan Partridge.



Sometimes mistakenly labeled as a mockumentary, I'm Alan Partridge is immediately removed from that label by its use of a laugh-track. In KMKYWAP, the audience sits in the same studio as Alan's, and he often reacts to their laughter as though to heckling. With IAP, the handheld camerawork does somewhat mimic that of a documentary, but that non-diegetic tittering causes a riff in the realism of the show, as Coogan and other cast members time delivery in accordance with the track. Partridge is thus occasionally portrayed as a bit more of a "doof" than he might have been otherwise, in his "hamming it up" like other sitcom characters.

In the first series of IAP, though the laughtrack is a bit jarring, there is still a melancholy to Alan Partridge. Episode to episode, Alan acts like a buffoon in different and varied ways, but the series is connected by an emotional motif – by Alan's fear of failure, specifically in terms of his chat show's renewal. This is represented visually by a recurring dream sequence, depicting Alan gyrating in a strip club for the BBC's Tony Hayers and other television executives. Alan will often act like a fool to try to avoid this nightmare, but as the other characters (particularly Sophie and Ben of the Linton Travel Tavern) know how outlandish Alan is acting, the realism is reaffirmed. Realism is not a necessity for a comedy show, but as Alan Partridge was initially conceived as a lampoon of a particular type of media personality, it is important for him to be grounded in reality. Thus, the world is not wacky, but a desperate Alan Partridge is. This is particularly revealed when, so determined to please some Irish television executives, Alan shows them to the house of a random fan in lieu of his own, and that aficionado ends up being an obsessive stalker. In IAP, however, even this "crazy" fan pales in comparison to Partridge's reactions to him.

The first series meanders in terms of quality, with the best episodes directly connected to Partridge's terror of being unsuccessful, and the worst wandering from this theme with empty and thus pointless jokes. (In "Basic Alan," a bored Alan makes for a bored audience.) The last episode brings the series to a nice close, with Alan so desperate for his career not to die, that he uses a dead man's hand to sign a contract. The cackling audience does not know whether Alan will succeed, but they do know how low he will stoop to ensure it.

In the second series of IAP, filmed five years after the first (2002), Alan is immediately brought back to his "roots" in the premiere, by giving a talk at his childhood school. But these are roots the viewers know nothing about, having never been established in the first series or before. Likewise, this episode is largely about exposition – Alan's career got somehow even worse, he had a breakdown, and he got fat — all sort of "funny" things that would leave a man as fragile as Alan shattered. Instead, Alan, having "bounced back," careens around, acting doofy as ever. Yet unlike the first series, in which almost every character seems to act as a rational foil to Alan's out of touch personality, a parade of guest stars enter into the world of IAP, each seemingly trying to outdo Alan with their wackiness. There is Alan's young Ukranian girlfriend Sonja (Amelia Bullmore), who in her broken English constantly plays practical jokes that even Alan knows are shamefully unfunny. There is Stephen Mangan as Dan, a seeming younger incarnate of Partridge's personality. Yet no longer is it crazy enough just that there exists another human being with Alan's god-awful disposition, and Alan ends up the saner one of the pair, as Dan is into orgies and "sex festivals." The undercurrent of melancholy in first series is replaced by a more "tragic" back-story, and "front"-stories obsessed with Alan not just embarrassing himself, but everyone else embarrassing themselves as well.

(Also, the former Linton staff-member Michael, someone whom Alan never previously seemed to like or be able to understand, is elevated to the spot of Alan's best friend.)

In the last episode of the second series, as Alan's book is pulped and officially regarded as a flop, the tragedy mentioned in the premiere is finally dealt with. As Alan is confronted with failure once again, he has a series of flash backs to his "Fat Alan" stage. He is invited onto a Christian radio show, and in an attempt to not look like the biggest dud there, he insults the other guest in increasingly rude ways. Yet instead of responding with some bigger, hammier reaction, the guest stops Alan like a rational human being would, and leaves. After five episodes of sit-com zaniness, a sense of realism is finally restored. There are many quotable lines in the second series, but had it maintained this more subdued approach, perhaps with a running motif of those flashbacks, it could have been a success beyond its punchlines.


Very funny series two scene... but this incident never comes up again, nor connects to anything.

The Christian radio host remarks on Alan's book ending every anecdote with the phrase "Needless to say, I had the last laugh." IAP's second series suffers from this obsession as well. In order for IAP to be not only funny but compelling, the characters do not need to try to outdo each other with their crazy hijincks and clever quips. The goofy, but more subtle Alan Partridge of The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You can already bring laughs just with his exasperation. But IAP's second series, so desperate to make the audience snicker, largely dismisses realism and in doing so, reduces much character quality and consistency. And in a way, Partridge's fear of failure does come true.