Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

Generally speaking, movies adapted from TV sitcoms should be regarded as a no-go area. Too often they consist of a plot that would work well in a 30-minute television episode but is stretched to snapping point for the cinema.

Not this one, though. With a team of writers including Peter Baynham, Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci, this one has a perfectly good storyline that fills its 90 minutes very nicely and, better still, features Alan Partridge, one of the most splendidly and hilariously awful comic creations of recent decades.

Partridge, as portrayed by Coogan, is Everyman at his most obnoxious, conceited, self-absorbed, not half as clever as he thinks he is, ingratiating, cowardly, obsequious and disloyal. But, a small saving grace, beneath the cocky exterior lurks anxiety and fear. We all know people with some of these characteristics; God help us we probably have a few ourselves.

Here we find him as the unlikely hero – well, in a way – of an armed siege. Alan, in his 50s, his brief television career long behind him, is now a midmorning disc jockey at North Norfolk Digital, a minor local radio station about to be taken over, restaffed with younger people and, with the slogan ‘the way you want it to be’ renamed Shape.

Colm Meaney, a fellow elderly DJ worried about his job, asks Alan to intercede on his behalf, which he does until he realises it’s a toss-up between himself and Meaney as to who will be fired, whereupon he promptly betrays his friend.

And so to the siege. Meaney, sacked and desperate, bursts into Shape’s launch party and holds the station’s staff and management hostage at gunpoint. He demands his job back and a return to oldfashioned broadcasting standards and, unaware of the earlier duplicity, insists that Alan should be the negotiator with the armed police.

Now Dog Day Afternoon this ain’t. The siege itself is sloppily thought out and a bit unconvincing. But Alan’s reaction to the situation and the sudden limelight into which he is thrust is very funny.

He kisses the lady cop in charge, preens and dances for the attendant TV cameras, wisecracks with the crowd of rubbernecking onlookers and turns the whole affair into the Alan Partridge Show.

Of course, things go wrong when he loses his trousers – yes, I know, an old gag but done here with much ingenuity – and pictures of his bare bum appear on telly.

Gratifyingly, though, incidents such as this and one of my favourite moments when Alan shoots JFK (well, you had to be there) are simply thrown in, never overstressed and left behind as the action moves on.

It is, inevitably, very much Coogan’s film and he carries it with great aplomb. The everreliable Meaney is in good form, too, and there is strong support from Felicity Montagu as Alan’s pious, much-abused assistant Lynn and Sean Pertwee as a hard-nosed cop.

At a time when there aren’t that many good British comedies around, this is certainly one to see.