Anglian Lives: Alan Partridge

Anglican Lives was shown just a few months after the end of Series Two of 'I'm Alan Partridge' It's basically a spoof 'south bank show' style look at the life and career of Alan Partridge.

It serves as, to date, a nice wrap-up to the painful but hilarious path of Partridge that included On the Hour, The Day Today, Knowing Me Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge.

The show combines a pleasing mix of old footage and new interviews, including his 'supertalk' slots on radio Norwich, and a funny touch, is the pointless addition of questions from 'Digital Dave' The intervie is hardly 'hard hitting' as the main interview with Alan is conducted by the wet 'Ray Woolard' who is clearly under Alan's employ.

If you want to check this out and it's well worth it for Partridge fans then you'll find it on Disc Two of the 'I'm Alan Partridge' Series Two DVD.

I love the Alan Partridge series, but this was, well, patchy.

There are some good lines in it, but some elements are overplayed, e.g. the robot interviewer (Digital Dave), and "real life" interviewer Ray Woolard, who is clearly out of his depth and being manipulated by Partridge. There *are* a few laughs here, but not many compared to "Knowing Me, Knowing You", or "I'm Alan Partridge".

Also included are clips from Partridge's "Ramble in the Countryside", an attempt by Alan to show himself off as some kind of rural gentleman. (Presumably to help placate the farmers he annoyed on his radio show.)

The feature includes some clips from other Alan Partridge enterprises (including "The Day Today"), but it fails to impress overall.

Once again Steve Coogan destroys us with his fabulous Alan Partridge character-this time in the form of a 30 minute documentary about Alan's career and ideology and what his future holds. This doc is included on the second disc in the second DVD series of the second series, and it is absolutely fantastic. In the documentary we see Alan as even a bit more bitter and out of touch than on the actual show, as he reads aloud from his book, insults callers into his radio show and stays firmly anti-London. It's nice to see that as recent as 2003 Steve Coogan has held onto the center of what makes Alan such a watchable disaster; It's just plain funny.

I'll still maintain that the laugh track on I'm Alan Partridge dates it somewhat, especially in comparison to similar shows like The Office or Extras, but it's absence on this one-off TV Special kind of makes it a bit difficult.

By this point, Alan Partridge is just reduced to an idiot who makes the worst of every situation and crosses almost every single person he encounters. I hate the fact that Steve Coogan chose to take his most popular character in this easy, Homer Simpson-like direction but that's beside the point.

Alan is interviewed in a sort of Sunday morning BBC one-to-one with a presenter who makes a poor effort at making falseness of it seem genuine. Neither of them have a clue what they are doing and the only focus seems to be Alan's misunderstood autobiography and his hatred for London or people who don't share his views.

Not that good.

There's not much to be said that hasn't been said already. Just had to add my 10 star rating to this absolute classic.

What a show.