BBC Announce Filming Has Started On ‘This Time With Alan Partridge’
Back last August we got news that Steve Coogan’s alter-ego Alan Partridge would be returning to the BBC. Now the show has a name – ‘This Time With Alan Partridge‘ – and has begun filming.
The new series sees Alan handed a career lifeline with the chance to crawl out from the darkness of ‘North Norfolk Digital’ and back to TV as the stand-in temporary co-host on ‘This Time’, an evening weekday magazine show.
This marks his first return to live television since his 90s chat show ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ was cancelled after a guest was fatally shot on air. ‘This Time’ is the perfect shop window for a man of Alan’s gravitas and will, or should, see him finally recognised as one of the heavyweight broadcasters of his era.
The show itself is a heady mix of consumer affairs, current affairs, viewer interaction, highbrow interview and lightweight froth; very much the sweet spots for a man whose CV boasts over two decades of weekday local radio. And with an array of diverse subjects on the agenda, it promises the perfect fit for a man whose broadcasting style has been described as “equidistant between chitchat and analysis.”
Joining Steve Coogan on the sofa will be Susannah Fielding (‘The Great Indoors’, ‘I Want My Wife Back’) as his female co-presenter Jennie Gresham, and Tim Key (‘Gap Year’, ‘Detectorists’, ‘Mid Morning Matters’) as Simon “formerly Sidekick Simon” Denton.
‘This Time With Alan Partridge‘ is written by Neil Gibbons, Rob Gibbons, and Steve Coogan and will consist of 6×30 min episodes to air on BBC One later in 2018.
