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Location, Location, Location

Published 4th June 2024

TV Comedy

Shooting audience sitcom has all kinds of unique production problems compared to other types of television.

After all, any TV show has to decide whether to shoot a given scene on location, or in the studio. Each choice has advantages and drawbacks: you don’t have the expense of building a set on location, but you also have less control than in a studio. With audience sitcom, though, you start running into further problems. Is there room in the studio for that extra set in front of the audience? And yet if it’s a dialogue-heavy scene, surely you want to do it in front of the audience, so the actors can play off their reaction?

Squaring this particular circle can lead to some interesting results. Let’s take a look at three of them.

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Alan Partridge’s Sporting Season

Published 3rd November 2023

TV Comedy

STEVE COOGAN: I remember these clips that I comment to… Armando just came in with a load of sports clips and just put them on and said “Just say some stuff to these”. There was no script, just see what’s happening, just say stuff. So it was all made up as we went along.

Steve Coogan on… his most iconic TV moments, British GQ

Earlier this year, I asked the question: when did Alan Partridge first appear on television? The answer was a VERY CLEVER ONE because I AM BRILLIANT.

It was also an answer which is a little beside the point. The first real TV Partridge sketch was in the first episode of The Day Today, on the 19th January 1994. Yes, it’s highlights of Alan’s Sporting Season.

But have you ever wondered exactly where each piece of sports footage from the above sketch came from? The answer, of course, is: “No John, only you and you alone have ever done that”. But for those of you who are interested, please enjoy the following.

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The Pictures Are Much Much Better on Television

Published 6th July 2023

TV Comedy

Here’s a question for you. When did Alan Partridge first appear on television?

Caveats: a) I specifically mean television. Radio is brilliant, and also outside the scope of this article. b) For now, ignore any unbroadcast pilots. I’m talking about actual, broadcast telly. c) I do mean material exclusive to television, not just part of a radio programme aired on TV.

If you immediately went for the first episode of The Day Today, on the 19th January 1994, then join the club. That’s exactly where my mind went at first. So that would be this trademark awkward exchange between Chris and Alan:

But wait! The day before each episode of The Day Today aired, BBC2 broadcast The Day Today MiniNews, three minutes of extra material which served essentially as an extended trail for the next day’s episode. Or in other words: the closest you’d get to deleted scenes this side of a LaserDisc, at least in the first half of the 90s.

Partridge makes an appearance in the first one, which was broadcast on the 18th January 1994:

So is that the answer? Not quite. Because, of course, there were trails1 running for the series the week before air. Here’s one from the 14th January 1994, which features a brief bit of Partridge:

Incidentally, isn’t that a great trail? For all that Chris Morris has the reputation for scowling at publicity, you couldn’t ask for a better introduction to the show.

The above would usually cause me to make a variety of shrill and unpleasant noises, as I vainly tried to find the first transmission of a trail for the series. Luckily, we can sidestep that problem entirely. Because Partridge had an even earlier appearance on TV.

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  1. The BBC term is trails, not trailers, despite someone trying to correct me on this earlier in the year. ↩

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An Evening at Television Centre, Part Two

Published 16th April 2023

TV Comedy

The problem with writing this site is that I seem to go off on endless tangents, rather than writing what I’m supposed to be writing about.

Oh well, here we go again. On the 14th November 1997, a brand new series of The Fast Show started airing on BBC2. That first episode featured the debut of a new Paul Whitehouse character Archie, the pub bore. This first sketch is fairly normal; they get progressively odder.

Now, hidden away on the final disc of The Ultimate Fast Show Collection DVD, is a behind-the-scenes feature on Series 3 by yer man Rhys Thomas. And as part of this feature, we see a little snatch of this sketch being recorded:

At the end of that clip, you can see them setting up for the Chess sketch in Episode 6, which looks like it was recorded directly after.1 But the bit I want to concentrate on is the following bit of amusingness:

PAUL WHITEHOUSE: Coogan’s in tonight. What do you reckon we go round and do him?
MARK WILLIAMS: And then who’s left over? Then we go and do Shooting Stars!
PAUL WHITEHOUSE: Come on Lamarr, come on. You greaseball throwback…

Coogan was indeed in that night; but Whitehouse doesn’t mean he’s in the Fast Show audience. These two Archie sketches were shot on the 5th September 1997… the same night as an audience recording for I’m Alan Partridge. Specifically, Series 1 Episode 3, “Watership Alan”. Yeah, the one with Chris Morris. This episode was broadcast on the 17th November 1997, just three days after Series 3 of The Fast Show debuted.

As for Shooting Stars? The very first episode of Series 3 was recorded this night too, and broadcast on the 26th November 1997 This is the episode featuring Mariella Frostrup, Antony Worrall Thompson, Leo Sayer, and Tania Bryer. I find the latter particularly amusing, as back at the start of 1997, she had appeared in the “Science” episode of Brass Eye, warning us of the dangers of mutant clouds. I wonder if she was tempted to pop round to TC1 and lamp Morris one.

Regardless: The Fast Show, I’m Alan Partridge and Shooting Stars, recording at TV Centre in the same evening. And all broadcast in the same month too.

If I may permit myself a note of melancholy that I don’t usually indulge in here on Dirty Feed: I think we’ve lost something, guys.

  1. There appears to be an invisible edit 24 seconds in; the chessboard magically appears on the table. ↩

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“Television is a waste of time, people”

Published 4th April 2018

Other TV

Khoi Vinh, “Movies Watched, 2017”, 5th January 2018:

“That beats my 2016 total by five and averages out to just under sixteen a month, a pace I credit to my continued adherence to a largely television-free diet. I’m going into my third year doing this now and I don’t miss TV much at all, especially as eschewing it has afforded me the time to watch and re-watch so many great or obscure or fondly remembered movies that I’d never be able to otherwise. Television is a waste of time, people.”

Khoi Vinh, “Movies Watched, February 2018”, 8th March 2018:

“Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle” Also hilarious.

Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle is not a movie, but a television programme, originally made and broadcast by Sky in 2016. And not only is it a television programme, but it’s a parody which makes fun of the conventions of a certain kind of television documentary. It only fully works in the context of it being a television programme.

If you’re going to dismiss an entire artform, by all means do so. But it’s probably best to be consistent about it, rather than pretending the bits you like are actually movies instead.

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Now That’s What I Call Alan Partridge:
2017 Mixcloud Edition

Published 2nd April 2017

Music / TV Comedy

Back in 2010 – long before this bugger was released – I created an I’m Alan Partridge soundtrack album. It featured not only songs from the show, but also clips and jingles and a few surprises, hopefully all mixed together in something approaching a fun way. It’s by far the best thing I’ve done on this site, and it’s been a slow inexorable decline ever since.

Originally it was hosted by MediaFire, until it got booted off for copyright infringement. Then it was hosted on my Dropbox, where amazingly it managed to survive until very recently. But with the latest disabling of all Dropbox public folders, it managed to fall offline yet again. So I thought it was about time I uploaded it somewhere legal rather than trying my luck once more.

Enjoy.

Now, I really must get round to making that Maid Marian and Her Merry Men album…

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Cock Piss Partridge, etc

Published 24th July 2012

TV Comedy

In a world of DVDs and downloads, one advantage television still has is when it comes to rights issues. Negotiating rights to music for commercial release can be especially tricky – series like Life on Mars and Skins are especially hurt by it. Even a show like I’m Alan Partridge isn’t quite the same on the DVD release as it was on broadcast. So, when Dave decided to do an I’m Alan Partridge Series 2 marathon last Sunday night, it was an ideal way of seeing the programmes as they were originally transmitted, yes?

Anyone reading this blog who has spent more than five minutes watching any of Gold or Dave will know the answer to that question. In fact, the episodes were edited for content for transmission pre-watershed – and then also shown in this state post-watershed. (The first two episodes were shown before the watershed, as the marathon started at 8pm – but they were repeated later in the evening with exactly the same cuts.) Here then, is a list of all the edits made to these episodes – indicated [like this] – and tune in for the commentary at the end.

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A Fascinating Post About I’m Alan Partridge Title Sequences

Published 23rd July 2012

TV Comedy

Yesterday Dave decided to have an I’m Alan Partridge Series 2 marathon. Only I can spin two blog posts out of this fact. It’s the boring one today, and then the really boring one tomorrow.

So, here’s the title sequence – taken from the Series 2 DVD – from the episode I Know What Alan Did Last Summer:

…and here’s the version taken from the Dave broadcast on the 22nd July at 10:40pm:

The same clips, but without all the graphics added. Not even the title of the show! OK, so it’s not up to the standards of this, but still. (It does at least afford us a proper look at the set used for Alan’s pieces to camera which close each sequence.)

Checking the rest of the episode, barring deliberate edits for language (see tomorrow for more on that), the rest of the episode was identical to the DVD version. I’d be fascinated to know how the wrong version of the episode was even delivered to UKTV. Not that it should ever have got to air anyway…

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