Alan Partridge is back at rock bottom – and it’s the funnies...

Like anyone who has grown up in the shadow of Alan Partridge’s three-decade dominion over British comedy, I want only the very best for Norwich’s most relentless broadcaster. By which I mean the absolute worst. For me, Partridge is at his finest when he’s scrabbling around the media’s outer fringes, rebranding past humiliations as glories and furiously name-dropping 1980s television personalities to the nonplussed acquaintances he genuinely believes to be his closest friends.

Sadly, Alan has been riding (relatively) high in recent years. In 2022, Steve Coogan’s creation – now co-written by Rob and Neil Gibbons – embarked on a UK arena tour as a motivational speaker, imparting dubious advice to tens of thousands of adoring fans. Before that, he landed the job of a lifetime: a presenting gig on the BBC’s daily tea-time magazine show This Time. Obviously, he was disastrous – but was still invited to return for a second series.

So it brings me great pleasure to report that Alan is finally back where he belongs: at rock bottom. In How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge) – a self-produced, self-directed and largely self-funded series about the nation’s mental health – we are reunited with the presenter four years after the on-air meltdown that ended his BBC career. Since then, he’s pivoted (involuntarily) to the corporate sphere. He spent time in Saudi Arabia, shilling camel milk products with the requisite servility, and still presents Gulf Digital’s breakfast show from “downtown Jeddah” (AKA a Norwich business park) on an ad hoc basis. He hosts events for a pig feed manufacturer. He leads focus groups. He commentates on school sports days (“all-these-boys-racing-with-each-other-but-they’ve-already-won-the-race-of-life-by-going-to-a-fee-paying-school”). He lends his dulcet tones to everything from supermarket vans to the lift at Norwich library.

Once a degrading step down of its own on the steadily descending staircase that was Alan’s pre-This Time career (previous rungs included military quiz Skirmish on digital channel UK Conquest and the graveyard slot on terrestrial local radio), Alan’s stint presenting Mid Morning Matters on North Norfolk Digital now seems like a peak never to be scaled again. At one stage, he wheedles his way into the station’s depressing offices where no one remembers his name in order to film content for the documentary with his erstwhile sidekick Simon Denton (Tim Key). Yet even the chronically amenable Denton hates his guts. Meanwhile, his supposed best mate Daryl Flench (whose tanning salon franchise is also sponsoring How Are You?) is clearly having an affair with his nasty new girlfriend Katrina (Katherine Kelly).

Why is there so much joy in seeing Partridge brought so low? It’s not quite schadenfreude – although his narcissism means it’s hard to feel particularly sorry for him. And while cringe comedy can also be feelgood TV – there is true comfort in knowing we are not Alan – that’s not the whole story. Instead, there’s something spellbinding and strangely uplifting about the way Alan reacts to the bottom falling out of his life. Ostensibly prompted by a fainting spell at a farming event, How Are You? is really an attempt to jump on the mental health bandwagon – if anything, the series fails because Alan is too functional to be an interesting case study. His arrogance and pettiness never falters, but neither does his resilience and determination. Really, it should have been over for Alan the moment he accidentally shot and killed a guest on his 1990s chatshow Knowing Me, Knowing You. Inspirationally, he has staggered on for decades.

Alan is, of course, spurred on by steely delusion. He reframes his This Time exit as parting “ways with the BBC after delivering a few home truths”. A master of bullish doublethink, you believe him when he says he finds corporate work just as fulfilling as TV, even though he clearly doesn’t. He does, however, seem genuinely impervious to criticism. During a tense exchange with Denton in which the pair are encouraged to speak their truths therapy-style, his former sidekick admits, “I want to tell you to fuck off and say that when you worked here no one at the station liked you.” Alan seems invigorated, not wounded, by the exchange. He finds endless tiny ways to sate his ego – showing off a framed picture of himself with Crimewatch presenter Sue Cook’s brother, for example. He is either able to push guilt down into the furthest recesses of his being, or simply doesn’t feel it at all. Alongside a festering contempt for Noel Edmonds (the basis of many great gags here), this combination of denial and solipsism has coalesced into the kind of get-up-and-go that is unquestionably impressive for a man on the edge of 70.

The other reason it’s so satisfying to see Alan on his uppers is because the character has long been an exquisite study in dwindling celebrity. Opportunities for the once-famous have never been greater: podcasts, crowdfunded content, social media, personalised video messages (“a nice little earner” for Alan), an entire ecosystem of reality TV and gameshows (we get a sublime glimpse of Alan on a celebrity cooking series, tearily admitting he’s forgotten what dill looks like). In an almost sketch show-less world, few are able to spoof the celebrity landscape. Often, fame seems effortless and aspirational – a product of the audience’s desire rather than the celebrity’s – yet Partridge’s interactions with the public remind us that most pursue it, feverishly.

In How Are You? Alan is the funniest he’s been in years. This Time certainly had its moments (Sidekick Simon’s eye-watering struggles with the studio smart screen; Partridge demonstrating the optimal technique for corporal punishment on a visit to his old school), but it was always difficult to believe anyone would give Alan that job. Still, sometimes you just need a little boost to get you back on that comically fertile downward spiral.

How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge) is on iPlayer now