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Clunkers from the Alan Partridge Canon

Started by Twed, February 24, 2019, 09:13:51 PM

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Norton Canes

Quote from: Twed on February 25, 2019, 12:24:45 PM
Can we please not do Best of the Beatles again, there was already an interminable thread about it, please go and find that.

FTFY

alan nagsworth

Quote from: Twed on February 25, 2019, 12:24:45 PM
Can we please not do Best of the Beatles again, there was already an interminable thread about it, please go and find that.

I'm sorry. I wasn't aware of that.

magval

Aye.

Sorry about that, that was my fault...

I've never liked that Alan thought Sherlock Holmes was a real person. I also don't like when Simon Fisher asks if he's seen Citizen Kane and he replies "yes, I've seen every episode. Power to the people". Doesn't credit the audience, having him issue the catchphrase like that.

I don't much like the "I dost venture south" conversation either.

Twed

Quote from: alan nagsworth on February 25, 2019, 12:31:12 PM
I'm sorry. I wasn't aware of that.
Sorry I was a bit harsh. Not your fault. Some people didn't know that bringing that up again in this thread was (I think) just a joke because of the tiring conversation that came before.

Twed

Quote from: magval on February 25, 2019, 12:42:44 PM
Aye.

Sorry about that, that was my fault...

I've never liked that Alan thought Sherlock Holmes was a real person. I also don't like when Simon Fisher asks if he's seen Citizen Kane and he replies "yes, I've seen every episode. Power to the people". Doesn't credit the audience, having him issue the catchphrase like that.
I quite like that Citizen Kane/Smith joke. A person who only dabbles in culture at a surface level to make them more impressive to other people (like Alan) could easily make that kind of mistake. For me it doesn't require Alan not to know what Citizen Kane is, it just means he's not fluent enough to prevent mixups.

"The original cartoon by Dickens" was stupid. A good gag, but again too stupid for Alan. We're now supposed to believe that Alan Partridge doesn't know who Charles Dickens is. Come on.

ajsmith2

Quote from: mr. logic on February 25, 2019, 08:26:24 AM
Thinking Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

Pretty sure this has already been discussed at some point here (though not as much as Best of the Beatles) but that really is such a weird bad bit in the radio series. It's not only that Alan thinks Sherlock Holmes was real, but that the Patrick Marber guy he's interviewing (supposedly an intellectual booksmart type) in his reply appears to agree with the premise that the Holmes stories are told from SH's point of view, rather than Watsons. It's not nitpicking to get annoyed by that as it undermines the entire joke and just comes across as weird. I always wondered what was going on there. Was it just that Coogan/Marber/Ianucci between them had never read a Sherlock Holmes story and were just winging it?

Now I'm thinking about it again I guess he only says something along the lines of 'if Sherlock Holmes was real how could he describe the circumstances of his own death?' which I guess could just be Marbers guy pointing out the reducto ad absurdum of AP's misapprehension without saying he agreed that the fictional character Holmes describes his own death in The Final Problem, but it does seem odd he doesn't add that it was Watson who was fictionally writing the stories in any case.

notjosh

I tried to clear this up after mentioning it in the last thread, to no avail:
https://twitter.com/Not_Josh/status/1022110531858120704

On the scale of Alan's pop culture mistakes, I would say this is at the too far-fetched end, with Citizen Smith on the cusp of believable, and Cyrano de Bergerac in the sweet spot.

QDRPHNC

Outside the reality of the Alanverse, IAP2 really is a low point. It has it's moments, but when it goes bad, it really goes bad. The meeting with the tax women (Sonia arrives, then she leaves, then Lynn calls the police (?), then she's at the petrol station...), the meeting the Dante Fires chap (haha, it's sounds like cunt), the meeting with the wet t-shirt video woman (haha, we're listing off unlikely porno names, that hasn't been done before), the bit at Lynn's baptism where he keeps telling Rob Brydon to fuck off. Just labourious, underwritten, half-baked crap - shockingly bad considering the talent involved. And that's not even getting into what they did to Alan himself, turning him into a cartoon speaking almost entirely in Alanisms.

Even Alpha Papa, I have an easier time forgiving, as most TV performers and writers struggle when faced with making a glossy 2 hour feature.

popcorn

Quote from: Swoz_MK on February 25, 2019, 09:42:51 AM
Alpha Papa - playing bass like he's Victor fucking Wooten.

The revelation in Alpha Papa that Alan is a proficient bassist is a bombshell that, in my mind, changed everything, and yet went completely unexamined.

I cannot imagine him as a musician at all. I can't really imagine him being genuinely good at anything, or dedicated enough to spend time honing a skill. Air bass, air drums, sure, but not the real thing. It was odd. Never mentioned in the books either.

Sebastian Cobb

Yes it seems odd. And he's always played as a radio personality that knows fuck all about music, like a lot of the 80's/90's ilk were.

ToneLa

It seems like a joke, ironically, by someone who isn't a musician or even clued up remotely aboot music

Ah, the bass!! So naff!! Haha, the bassist eh.

Like if Alan wrote Alan.

thraxx

Quote from: popcorn on February 25, 2019, 01:56:24 PM
The revelation in Alpha Papa that Alan is a proficient bassist is a bombshell that, in my mind, changed everything, and yet went completely unexamined.

I cannot imagine him as a musician at all. I can't really imagine him being genuinely good at anything, or dedicated enough to spend time honing a skill. Air bass, air drums, sure, but not the real thing. It was odd. Never mentioned in the books either.

I love thinking about Alan and his world as much as I enjoy watching, reading and listening to it, but I often wonder if we are delving to much into what is at the end of the day a fictional comedy character that has evolved (not revolved), over 25 years in loads of different formats and writers now.  Yes, that Alan suddenly can play bass pretty well is odd, but nothing compared to On The Hour, when his wife rose from the dead in one episode, for freak's sake.  I think even Coogan admits that AP is not quite cannon, and that's okay and hardly surprising when you consider a) what a feature length movie has to aim for compared to a BBC 2 series and b) that they didn't have a proper script when they started filming AP.  There's lot's of clunkiness and bad jokes in there, but lack of continuity is to expected with Alan given the course his career has taken.  It remains a very pleasant topic to talk about though.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: mr. logic on February 25, 2019, 08:26:24 AM
Thinking Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

To be fair, that was in the very first episode of the KMYYWAP radio series, when they hadn't quite finessed Alan's character. He's an ignorant man, but he's not that stupid.

When they eventually hit upon the idea that Alan was right-wing but sort of aware of, and vaguely on board with, political correctness - you can see that trait emerging in the KMKYWAP TV series - that's when the character came alive.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: ajsmith2 on February 25, 2019, 09:01:50 AM
Always thought the Milky Bar Kid interview with Simon Pegg from 2005 was weak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk-NlvY6O4k

Anything from the wilderness years 2003-2009 where the character had been mainly put out to pasture except for guest spots like this seems a bit rubbish. No one at the time could have foreseen the 2010s Renaissance and at the time these seemed like the last squeezes from the toothpaste tube.

Absolutely. The Alan character was spent in those days, a tired parody of himself, which just makes the Gibbons-helmed renaissance even more remarkable and delightful.

ajsmith2

Speaking of continuity, I've always been impressed by how largely consistent Alan's age has been. I remember the Alpha Papa fictional blog for the character had his birthdate as 1955, which while not chiming exactly with I'm Alan Partridge (In which he declares 'I'M 43 YOU CHEEKY GIT' in 1997, from which a birthdate on 1954 can be extrapolated) at just a year out is close enough. Even within the I'm Alan Partridge 1997 series things are cut a bit fine: he's 43 but Fernando is 22, meaning AP became a father fairly young at 21. AP is such a quintessentially middle aged character though I wonder if he can be aged much more naturally in future though. At 63 according to the Alpha Papa birthdate he's pushing the limits of where the boomers have managed to extend the definition of middle aged to. I wonder if Coogan and the writers will ever introduce a blatantly old git version of the character. Still I guess there are precedents for presenters like Des O Connor who seem to exist in a kind of showbiz perma-agelessness that an ostensibly septuagenarian and octogenation Partridge could emulate.

In the first episode of the radio show (the same one containing the Sherlock Holmes weirdness) when he's talking to Adam Wells who disdainfully notes that he never saw Partridge at any 60s orgies it kind of suggests Wells sees him as being a contemporary (ie old enough to have been an adult in the 60s) which a mid 50s birthdate would make impossible, but I appreciate that this was very early on in the characters development. There's also the fact that Partrirdge replies by sheepishly claiming his 60s were spent at family barbeques (scenarios that could easily have been frequented by a pre pubescent Partridge ) and it could be that Wells just misjudged Partridge's age.

I think radio Alan was probably supposed to be an undefined mid-forties already and they de-aged him when transferring him to TV.

St_Eddie

#46
I really don't like Alpha Papa.  I think that it's terrible and the positive reception and reviews, at the time of its release, actively annoys me, in all honesty.

Twed

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on February 25, 2019, 04:13:34 PM
I think radio Alan was probably supposed to be an undefined mid-forties already and they de-aged him when transferring him to TV.
I think there was definitely a point (sometime during IAP) where they realised he had to have settled into middle age prematurely.

St_Eddie

Quote from: QDRPHNC on February 25, 2019, 01:52:56 PM
Outside the reality of the Alanverse, IAP2 really is a low point. It has it's moments, but when it goes bad, it really goes bad. The meeting with the tax women (Sonia arrives, then she leaves, then Lynn calls the police (?), then she's at the petrol station...), the meeting the Dante Fires chap (haha, it's sounds like cunt), the meeting with the wet t-shirt video woman (haha, we're listing off unlikely porno names, that hasn't been done before), the bit at Lynn's baptism where he keeps telling Rob Brydon to fuck off. Just labourious, underwritten, half-baked crap - shockingly bad considering the talent involved. And that's not even getting into what they did to Alan himself, turning him into a cartoon speaking almost entirely in Alanisms.

I 100% agree with this.  I'm Alan Partridge series 2 is fine enough in its own right but as a continuation of the character and that world, it's terrible.  Broad shite with a sycophantic studio audience.

Quote from: ajsmith2 on February 25, 2019, 03:21:46 PM
Speaking of continuity, I've always been impressed by how largely consistent Alan's age has been. I remember the Alpha Papa fictional blog for the character had his birthdate as 1955, which while not chiming exactly with I'm Alan Partridge (In which he declares 'I'M 43 YOU CHEEKY GIT' in 1997, from which a birthdate on 1954 can be extrapolated) at just a year out is close enough.

Is there anything in I'm Alan Partridge series 1 to explicitly state that it's set in 1997 though?  It could just as easily be set in 1998, surely?  Recording/air date does not necessarily dictate the year in which the series itself is set.

ajsmith2

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 25, 2019, 05:02:48 PM

Is there anything in I'm Alan Partridge series 1 to explicitly state that it's set in 1997 though?  It could just as easily be set in 1998, surely?  Recording/air date does not necessarily dictate the year in which the series itself is set.

Nothing at all, I'm just going on what the audience would have presumed in 1997 when the show would be naturally assumed to be taking place now. I'm fine with retconning IAP one year forward to make the Alpha Papa date work perfectly. I mainly mentioned the Alpha Papa birthdate cos of how pleasantly surprised I was that it matched up fairly well (give or take a year) with what had been established previously. I was kind of afraid they were gonna floating timeline him a decade younger (which tbh they actually kind of did in terms of how he looked, but at least the backstory was pretty much consistent).

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 25, 2019, 04:54:30 PM
I really don't like Alpha Papa.  I think that it's terrible and the positive reception and reviews, at the time of its release, actively annoys me, in all honesty.

It's worst legacy is that Cuddly Toy by Roachford now receives regular airplay on the radio without a hint of irony.

Twed

I think it's alright. A good fun diversion. I treat it as a strange dream with Alan Partridge as the star (hence him looking different and being able to play bass). And it set up the whole Michael being missing-presumed-dead thing which I think is going to pay off beautifully.

ajsmith2

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 25, 2019, 05:02:48 PM


Is there anything in I'm Alan Partridge series 1 to explicitly state that it's set in 1997 though?  It could just as easily be set in 1998, surely?  Recording/air date does not necessarily dictate the year in which the series itself is set.

In fact, do you know what? IAP1 has to be set in 1998, as 'Fernando' by ABBA wasn't released until 1976, and it's stated that Partridge's son Fernando is 22 in IAP. (there's no way he was supposed to be just co-incidentally named Fernando: the joke surely is that he was named because of the song, most likely while it was in the charts).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_(song)

magval

Quote from: Twed on February 25, 2019, 05:43:18 PM
I think it's alright. A good fun diversion. I treat it as a strange dream with Alan Partridge as the star (hence him looking different and being able to play bass). And it set up the whole Michael being missing-presumed-dead thing which I think is going to pay off beautifully.

That's similar to how I took it, which is that it's the movie Alan would make.

On the bass thing though, his attentive air-bass does suggest that he has a more-than-passing interest which might also manifest is taking up learning the instrument, but I agree that it's best not to think about it too much.

kalowski

I have no issues at all with the Ladyboy stuff. It's not dated really, unless you are laughing at trans people. Wasn't there a musical around the time called 'Bangkok Ladyboys' or something? Even now, I bet I could find some porn called shemale or he/she porn. Like it or not, there is a fetish genre about trans people, especially who are partway through any operation. Alan is totally curious and clearly into that genre, whilst disliking himself for it. And if you don't think there could be a bunch of blokes using the term "ladyboy" to describe a drink you're very naïve.
To me, the joke is his discomfort at his own desires.

QDRPHNC

My understanding of the Ladyboy plotline was that Alan found Bangkok Ladyboys on TV the previous night, surprised himself by banging one out to it, and was now fascinated both by ladyboys and his own attraction to them.

What kalowski said.

Twed

Quote from: kalowski on February 25, 2019, 07:53:11 PMAnd if you don't think there could be a bunch of blokes using the term "ladyboy" to describe a drink you're very naïve.
??? What a weird point.

kalowski

Quote from: Twed on February 25, 2019, 08:04:37 PM
??? What a weird point.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not condoning it, I just imagine that this is the kind of shit some blokes still get up to.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: kalowski on February 25, 2019, 07:53:11 PM
I have no issues at all with the Ladyboy stuff. It's not dated really, unless you are laughing at trans people. Wasn't there a musical around the time called 'Bangkok Ladyboys' or something? Even now, I bet I could find some porn called shemale or he/she porn. Like it or not, there is a fetish genre about trans people, especially who are partway through any operation. Alan is totally curious and clearly into that genre, whilst disliking himself for it. And if you don't think there could be a bunch of blokes using the term "ladyboy" to describe a drink you're very naïve.
To me, the joke is his discomfort at his own desires.

There's the Ladyboys of Bangcock, which I think is a dance act that operates similarly to a travelling circus. They're still on the go and were pitched up along my route to work a while back.

BritishHobo

Think other people on here before have said IAP2 doesn't work because everyone around Alan is even weirder than him. I'm watching the James Bond episode and I see what people mean. It's fucking great - I love how everything revolves around this stupid marathon - but there's something properly odd and bleak about all these strange people in his caravan at the end, Tex and the builder and the ex-copper, all listening to him bang on about Bond.