This Time with Alan Partridge star responds to Piers Morgan criticism: “I think it’s great!”

“I think it’s great!”

This Time with Alan Partridge star Susannah Fielding has responded to Piers Morgan’s criticisms of the series, saying she thinks it’s “great” that the Good Morning Britain host hit out.

Poor Piers got all in a tizzy about This Time, which sees Steve Coogan’s Partridge co-host a painfully awkward BBC magazine show with the long-suffering Jennie Gresham (Fielding).

“Very sad news [about] the new Alan Partridge show, called This Time, which obviously mocks me and Susanna,” Morgan fumed on GMB.

“I used to love Alan Partridge, he used to be hilarious, brilliant. It is now utterly unwatchable.” (Piers also predicted that This Time would be pulled off the air after three or four weeks. It wasn’t.)

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“I think it’s great!” Fielding said, when asked by Digital Spy about Morgan’s comments. “I think that’s probably exactly what we expected. [ . . . ]

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Review: There has never been a Partridge moment more genius than this

Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge

Despite my long acquaintance with the Partridge phenomenon, I find myself utterly unprepared for Alan’s practical demonstration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Despite my long acquaintance with the Partridge phenomenon, I find myself utterly unprepared for Alan’s practical demonstration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

As Alan explains during his short filmed insert on CPR during This Time with Alan Partridge (BBC1); although the British Heart Foundation use a basic head-and-torso model for their training, Alan prefers a full-sized 35kg realistic human replica with workable joints for his monthly practice.

Lugging the petite, fully dressed female model from the loft of his spacious home, it slowly dawns on us, if not Alan, that this “replica” he purchased from his friend – the late Pate Gabbatiss – some years ago is in fact a sex doll, complete with full lips and generously proportioned mouthparts to which Alan eagerly “docks” in the initial stages of saving its life after a putative overdose.

In this scenario, Alan is rescuing his sister-in-law Eileen, who has OD’d because she hates his brother so very much. “Come on Eileen” is the heartfelt plea as he checks for pulse and breath. As a musical accompaniment to the saving of a silicone love doll’s life, Alan rejects the usual beat of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees (“namby pamby”) in favour of Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust”, a “pounding rock number that injects a welcome dose of realism”.

I am racking my mind to think of a funnier bit of Partridge/Steve Coogan over his eventful 28-year long career but can’t. The chocolate-sex session/dirty protest in the Linton Travel Tavern; the full stilton slammed into the face of BBC head of commissioning Tony Hayers; the “king and car” sequence on Mid-Morning Matters; hiding in the septic tank of the chemical toilet on the Radio Norfolk roadshow bus; conversations with Michael at the BP garage: all brilliant, but none more genius than this.

Quite unnecessarily, at the conclusion of Alan’s first-aid class he advises This Time viewers: “Don’t forget to clean the mouth.” Rinsing Eileen’s cavity may be relatively straightforward, but not cleansing the memory of the image of Alan Partridge pummelling a rather primly-dressed sex doll. It is a wonder that, with its poor head bouncing as it does on hard flooring, the doll retains a beatific smile throughout. Lovely stuff.

In that respect at least, Eileen the doll resembles Alan’s co-presenter Jennie Gresham (Susannah Fielding), who seems to have got the knack of dealing with Alan by a mixture of humouring his eccentricities and ignoring his unscripted outbursts about his former wife, Carol. Somehow the pair of them manage to navigate a series of standard fluffy news-magazine items that quickly degenerate into unbroadcastable outrages against taste and decency, “Eileen” serving as a symbol of the show’s awfulness.

 

Aha! Watch the first trailer for Alan Partridge’s return to the BBC

We get our first glimpse into the studio of Steve Coogan’s gloriously ghastly creation as he partners up on a new show with Susannah Fielding’s Jennie Gresham on new show This Time

Someone rather familiar has slipped out of his Pringle jumper and golfing slacks and put on a proper suit and tie and bright green shirt for his return to the BBC.

Yup, it’s Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge, back with a glimpse at his new show, This Time, in this first look trailer:

Described by the BBC as a “heady mix” of consumer affairs, news, “highbrow interviews and lightweight froth”, it sees Alan join Jennie Gresham (Susannah Fielding) on the sofa after her usual sidekick – a character called John – is hospitalised after a heart attack. John’s misfortune sees Alan trying to “worm his way back into the BBC”.

“It’s about hanging on,” says Coogan.

As fans know, the last time Alan appeared live on the BBC he managed to shoot a guest dead on chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge.

The new series will also see a return for Tim Key as Simon ‘formerly Sidekick Simon’ Denton, who appeared in his Sky Atlantic Partridge shows Mid Morning Matters and the film Alpha Papa. Felicity Montagu will also return as Alan’s assistant Lynn.

Source: Aha! Watch the first trailer for Alan Partridge’s return to the BBC