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This Time with Alan Partridge


chokeout

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I wasn't sure at first, but I think I agree that it's going to build to ever more preposterous levels. It felt closer to Knowing Me, Knowing You than to anything he's done since, in that it was as much a send-up of a ubiquitous TV format as it was an exploration of Partridge as a character, though with the added bonus of Partridge himself now being a known quantity and a tragic figure. Even down to Partridge demonstrating how to use a train toilet without using your hands feeling like a kind of physical comedy that's a bit at odds with the format, but just the sheer audacity of him finding it an appropriate thing to do makes it hilarious. 

You could tell it was a Baynham and Iannucci-less Partridge, because it never felt like there was one example of the perfect kind of turn of phrase he seemed to bring to the table, and the sense of tragedy was more around Partridge being inherently a sad act, whereas with Iannucci at the helm there was always far more of a sense of a man who had hit rock bottom - I think he once said there was nowhere else he could take Partridge once he'd driven to Dundee in his bare feet after binging on Toblerones.

I wasn't really keen on Sidekick Simon being there - as a character type, he makes sense as the radio sidekick, but felt out of place in this environment, and for me didn't really add anything. 

If I have one significant complaint, it's that the format is a bit muddled - how much are we watching an episode of This Time as it airs, and how much are we watching the "behind the scenes" of it being filmed? It was usually pretty clear when they go to a VT and Alan's co-host removes her headset, but at the end, when he's ending up in the lift, before he gave his final piece to camera, it wasn't really clear how much of what we were watching was still supposed to be what was happening on "This Time" and being filmed by an in-universe cameraman, and what was happening "behind the scenes". So was him making awkward small talk with Emily Maitlis supposed to be broadcast to everyone watching This Time, or not?

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I'll be honest, my heart sank 10 minutes in when I saw Tim Key, because I can't stand him. But even that bit was really good.

Absolutely howled at the Clunt/Fluck bits. Hopefully this goes down the Knowing Me Knowing You route and the show goes to shit (in a good way).

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Just watched the 2nd episode and thought it was great again this week, with parts of it just brilliant to watch. I don't want to say too much about it and spoil it, but the sequence when Partridge takes a seat at the back of the audience made me laugh more than I have laughed in a while, as did the anagram.

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"As Kirstie Allsop says- a welfare dog is a slow dog". What a wonderful jab at that horrible individual.

That was brilliant, better than last week's episode. The tribute tweets for the dead former presenter near the end of the show killed me. I'm a Catherine wheel!

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loved this episode. Pretty much every criticism/concern I had of the first episode was nowhere to be seen this time around; Alan was the perfect mix of tragic and quite horribly self-serving, and the whole format of the show felt much more solid and believable than first time around.

Anything that gets more Simon Farnaby on the TV is a plus in my book, and I hope he's a recurring character.

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41 minutes ago, kieranjennings said:

It was a 'Well fed dog is a slow dog' wasn't it?

 

Was it? I thought he said welfare, and the context made sense given what he was talking about. You're probably right, 'well fed dog' does make sense.

Still, one thing that doesn't change is the fact that Kirstie Allsop is a prick.

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