‘This Time With Alan Partridge’: First Look At Steve Coogan’s BBC Comedy Return

Details have emerged about Alan Partridge’s return to the BBC as filming begins on Steve Coogan’s latest iteration of the classic comedy character.

BBC One will launch This Time With Alan Partridge later this year, more than 25 years since Coogan and Armando Iannucci created the character. The six-part series will see Partridge handed a career lifeline – the chance to temporarily stand in as co-host on evening weekday show This Time.

This Time, which is a mix of consumer affairs, current affairs, viewer interaction, highbrow interview and lightweight froth, marks Alan’s first return to live television since his 1990s chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You was cancelled after a guest was fatally shot on air.

Coogan will be joined in the series by Susannah Fielding, who has starred in Black Mirror and CBS comedy The Great Indoors and plays his female co-presenter Jennie Gresham, as well as Tim Key, who plays Simon ‘formerly Sidekick Simon’ Denton, who first appeared in Partridge’s online series Mid Morning Matters. Further casting is expected.

Coogan last played Partridge in Sky Atlantic’s Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle and in two seasons of Mid Morning Matters as well as 2013’s Studiocanal film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa.

The new series is written by Coogan, Neil Gibbons and Rob Gibbons, who also direct. It is produced by Coogan’s BBC Worldwide-backed indie Baby Cow Productions and is exec produced by Coogan and Christine Langan with Ted Dowd as producer. It was ordered for BBC One by Shane Allen, Controller of Comedy Commissioning and Commissioning Editor Kate Daughton.

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