Broadcasting His Decline

Alan Partridge: Alpha PapaDirected by Declan Lowney
Three and One Half Stars

By Jonathan Fisher

Alan Partridge, the long-lived character played repeatedly by Steve Coogan in various incarnations over the past 20 or so years, is distinctly unlikable. He’s irresponsible, selfish, at times sleazy. The chronicling of his career since his first appearance in 1991 has essentially been a spectacular fall from grace due to incompetence and a complete lack of self-awareness. Partridge lay dormant for a few years in the middle of last decade, but came back with a vengeance with the publication of the viciously hilarious memoir I, Partridge in 2011 (I strongly recommend the audiobook as read by Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge), and now the feature film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa follows Partridge’s latest misadventures as a mid-morning slot presenter on a local digital radio station. It should be noted that Partridge’s career seems to have followed an inverse trajectory to most media personalities – beginning with a prime time show (Knowing Me, Knowing You) which was unceremoniously cancelled after Partridge accidentally killed a guest on-air. Each time Partridge has appeared he has been in gradually less and less glamorous positions, until his current one at North Norfolk digital, where he vomits forth inane chat with his dopey and infinitely more humorous sidekick Simon (Tim Key).

After North Norfolk Digital is taken over by a large corporation named Shape, Partridge’s fellow chat show host dinosaur Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) quickly identifies himself and Partridge as two clear options for management to fire. Partridge storms into a board meeting initially intending to back Farrell, but after spotting a document that indicates the redundancy position comes down to Farrell or him, Partridge quickly changes tack and convinces the board to fire Farrell.

At the takeover launch party, Partridge is distracted by a former lover. He escorts her from the building hastily as he is too ashamed for his professional colleagues to see her, and while in the car park he fails to notice a gunman enter the radio offices. Partridge returns to the offices to discover that the gunman is Pat, who is the epitome of a disgruntled former employee. He has taken the radio faculty hostage. Partridge flees the scene (after inadvertently knocking Simon out and leaving him for dead) and informs the police. Pat insists that he is only willing to negotiate through Partridge. Thus Partridge is thrust into the midst of  this dangerous situation, setting up a brilliant comedic premise in which a completely self-interested narcissist is tasked with securing the safety of a batch of innocent victims.

Written by Partridge co-creators Coogan, Armando Ianucci (the doyenne of British comedy who is also behind The Thick of It), Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa hits all the right notes for a film of this sort. Partridge continues to be portrayed as a superficial, insecure, narcissistic, sexually repressed prude whose self-interest blinds him to how much of a weird asshole he comes across as to his colleagues. Alan Partridge has no character arc. He is doomed to replay the same torturous situations over and over. The humour comes from his inability to learn or improve himself. It says something that, in many ways, the villain of this movie is more sympathetic than Partridge the protagonist.

Like most of the Alan Partridge film and radiography, Alpha Papa is also quietly observant, as well as being beautifully timed. There’s one or two minor nods to the homogenisation of radio culture, as well as a funny scene involving the depths the paparazzi will plunge in order to make a quick buck. (Coogan has been a prominent activist against the practices of tabloid media and appeared as a high-profile subject in the recent Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking in the UK).

Observations to one side, though, because this movie really is about the humour. And there is plenty of it, coming from Partridge himself and the other principals. Armando Iannucci and co. are excellent at not merely creating one funny character per story, but a whole range. Meaney as Pat Farrell is, at times, side-splitting as a clearly mentally deranged individual who nonetheless enjoys the opportunity to riff with his audience and play hokey dedications.

Comedy is one of the most subjective genres in literature. There really is no accounting for taste. I am the sort of person that finds deep and rewarding humour in observing characters like Alan Partridge bumble about, making a complete tit of himself while digging his own hole for his sad life to fall into. I find these characters (David Brent and Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm are two others) instructive as cautionary tales about letting oneself become too self-interested, and in their instruction I find humour. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa is a comedy in the proud British tradition of featuring detestable characters that one would hate to sit next to at the pub or a dinner party. If you can get past that, and laugh that you may not scream, you might enjoy Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa as much as I did.