This Time With Alan Partridge

As Tony Hayers's widow will testify, Alan Partridge and death aren't always comfortable bedfellows. Tonight, the passing of former This Time presenter John Baskell leaves Alan with the job of co-presenting a sombre tribute. Will he find the right tone? What do you think?

This Time with Alan Partridge, episode 2, review

This is television comedy for the connoisseur.

There was something metatextually fascinating about the scheduling on Monday night, when the BBC followed Warren with This Time With Alan Partridge. Steve Coogan's return - remember, this character was created in 1991, and that's some longevity in comedy years - was by and large triumphant. I clutched myself gleefully at the pitch-perfect pastiche of The One Show, replete with fixed grins and soft-soaping and "questions" that a stuffed velveteen rabbit could bat back with a sleepy paw, and sudden shifts to "investigation": goodness, that real-life show is one drift of dreck.

Susannah Fielding is a terrific asset. I''m immensely looking forward to further intense interplay between those two egos sitting slightly too forcedly close together on the couch. Partridge now has just enough (intensely hard-won) self-knowledge to know when he's flubbed something; his tragedy is that it can never be enough to prevent re-flub, often before the mouth has closed. Grand already and can get only better.