2019 British comedy seeing the return of Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge... in more ways than one. A second series was released in 2021.
Over twenty years after his first (and last) television hosting gig ended ignominiously with the shooting of a guest and the punching of a senior programming executive with a chicken, Alan Partridge has (somehow) returned to BBC television. After the regular male host of This Time, an evening magazine program (think The One Show) has suddenly fallen ill, Alan is drafted to temporarily act as the host alongside Jennie Gresham, the chipper young female host. Eagerly grasping what may be his last chance to return to broadcast television and escape the dreary world of local digital radio, Alan launches into his new role with all the talent, ability, charm and skill he is able to muster.
These tropes, this time:
- Accidental Innuendo: In-Universe, courtesy of Alan, of course. Jennie, his attractive and somewhat younger co-host, is invariably on the receiving end.
- Actually Pretty Funny: A meta example: Sam Chatwin is widely viewed as a jab at TV historian Dan Snow, son of former BBC news correspondent Peter Snow, and the accusations of Nepotism that have surrounded his career. As demonstrated here
, Snow himself seemed to view the parody with plenty of good humour. - Adaptation Distillation: Not quite an adaptation, since it's part of the same universe, but the show essentially distills parts of previous media starring Alan into one.
- It takes the "live on-air" approach from The Day Today and especially Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge.
- The "behind-the-scenes" glimpses allow us to see Alan outside of the showbiz personality to the loser underneath, as with I'm Alan Partridge. Lynn also shows up throughout the episodes, and Alan's interactions with Ted, the recurring fan from Sunderland, evoke his dynamic with Michael.
- Giving Alan a co-host to bounce off echoes Mid Morning Matters. Simon also appears.
- The Alcoholic: John Baskell, if what Alan says about his whisky intake is true.
- Almost Famous Name: One of Simon's features involves a tiler called Dennis Nilsen. Alan is quick to point out that that's also the name of an infamous serial killer, and is then quick to emphasise that "it's a different guy, though".
- As Herself: Emily Maitlis, the then-presenter of Newsnight, appears in the first series when Alan chases "Mickey" out of the studio and into a lift.
- As Himself: Gardening presenter Monty Don is the victim of Alan's bungled entrapment attempt.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The other people who appear in front of the cameras on This Time aren't really much better than Alan, they're just more charming and adept at hiding it.
- Jennie seems to be all smiles and charm (although this, naturally, starts to slip the more time she spends next to Alan), but she's very quick to steal the off-air jokes he makes that actually work and use them herself on-air. It is also implied at times that she is a bit of a two-faced prima donna behind the scenes.
- John Baskell is memorialized as a saintly and beloved television fixture with lots of charity work under his belt, but Alan's frequent slip-ups on-air gradually make it clear that Baskell was a career-focused sleaze who cared little for his devoted fans. Revelations toward the end of his memorial episode reveal that he was also a sexual predator who used his charity work to find, groom and abuse his victims.
- Sam Chatwin is an oily, manipulative jerk who throws his weight around, belittles Alan, makes no secret about how he is planning on stealing Alan's job and is clearly only is where he is because of nepotism, but has sufficient charm to win the audience over.
- Ruth Duggan is never anything less than polite, friendly and professional on the surface, but she's never forgiven Alan for a slight in their past (according to him, he accidentally split shandy on her) and so is determined to undermine and embarrass him, usually by acting as the Commander Contrarian to everything he says.
- Biting-the-Hand Humour: It's a BBC sitcom that is set within, and pokes fun at, the BBC.
- Book Ends: The first series begins and ends with Alan asking someone back-stage to give him a glass of water.
- Brick Joke: Early in episode two, Alan looks at the ceiling and notices a shuttlecock. At the end of the episode, it falls onto the set. In a later episode, mention is made early on of Simon's charity attempt to squeeze twelve Queen song titles into the conversation; this is quickly forgotten with the score on eleven, until Alan describes Sam as being "under presssure" just before the episode ends.
- British Brevity: Thus far, twelve episodes spread through two series. Which is more than Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, and the same as I'm Alan Partridge.
- The Bully: Alan is this towards Simon, and to a lesser extent towards guests and interviewees he doesn't like.
- The Bus Came Back: A couple of one-off characters from previous Alanverse shows return.
- Joe Beazley and Cheeky Monkey, the crap puppet act that bombed in an episode of Knowing Me, Knowing You, is a guest on the show in the second episode of the second series. Joe claims that he's not still angry about the way things went last time, which is probably a lie given that he uses Cheeky Monkey to attack Alan (although he does sincerely offer Alan help with his depression after the cameras have stopped rolling).
- Rosie Whitter, the wine expert from Mid Morning Matters, is brought into the studio for a feature on cocktails.
- Butt-Monkey: Simon, who (as in his previous appearances in the Alanverse) exists mostly to be humiliated by Alan.
- Call-Back and Catchphrase: Alan 's old "AH-HAAA!" catchphrase gets a few airings, much to his annoyance; his Irish lookalike shouts it out (and is told that he did it wrong), and a couple of times a heckler is heard shouting it off-camera.
- The Cast Showoff: Alan is trying hard to be this In-Universe, although it usually comes across as Stylistic Suck; he recites his own poetry (a particularly cringe-inducing attempt to suck up to the BBC) and sings with the Quavers, in addition to which some of the musical pieces played during his feature segments are recognisably him singing.Alan: [singing] You and I, share a common language, when you and I, ate a sausage sandwich...
- Celebrity Resemblance: Guests include a Daniel Craig lookalike and an Irish Alan lookalike.
- Chekhov's Gun: Simon's big screen comes in handy for Alan when Jennie tries to stop the negative tweets about John Baskell from being read out by getting the crew to replace the Twitter feed on the main screen with a generic countryside picture. Sam having stolen Alan's place on the presenters' sofa also works to Alan's advantage here, as Simon's screen (located on the left of the studio) is in direct line of sight from the guests' sofa, enabling Alan to carry on reading out the tweets.
- Comically Missing the Point: Alan recounts that when he went to see Hamilton, he thought he was going to see a musical about Lewis Hamilton.
- Commander Contrarian: Ruth Duggan, the roving reporter on whom Alan once accidentally spilled shandy. Because of this, she responds to Alan by contradicting everything he says, usually while on air. This even extends to when he is asking her whether she is happy about getting engaged, and when he repeats (word-for-word) a statement that Jennie had previously said that Ruth had agreed with.
- The Dog Bites Back:
- In episode one, Alan only reveals the true identity of "Mickey" after he'd antagonised Alan by revealing humiliating material found after hacking into Alan's computer.
- In episode two, Alan is increasingly belittled and humiliated by Jennie and Sam, who make no secret of the fact that they're openly gunning for Sam to take his job. Consequently, when it's revealed that John Baskell, whom they've been eulogising all episode, was a sexual predator, Alan takes great pleasure in making them squirm by reminding them just how much they've both been emphasizing how close they were to him.
- Establishing Character Moment: Jennie has a couple in the first episode — she mistakenly refers to Mid Morning Matters as a TV show note (showing that she doesn't know much about her new co-host, quite possibly because she's not expecting to work with him for long) and is quick to steal one of Alan's jokes.
- Expy: A few.
- Alan is in a role similar to that of Piers Morgan on the ITV breakfast show Good Morning Britain. Like Morgan, Alan is a tactless, unaware, self-promoting and petty middle-aged man working alongside a beautiful and younger woman who only barely tolerates his repulsive antics. However, Alan is far less of a boorish sleazebag than Morgan, probably in order to keep him from being too horrible to watch.
- Jennie is this to female TV presenters like Susanna Reid, who had to put up with working with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain.
- Sam Chatwin is a parody of Dan Snow, a TV historian and frequent contributor to The One Show (a key inspiration for the series), who many believe would probably not have such a prominent TV career as he does were his father not the legendary BBC journalist Peter Snow.
- The late John Baskell is this for several once-respected presenters who have, following the posthumous revelations about Jimmy Savile and the subsequent Operation Yewtree police investigation, been found to have used their positions as cover for committing many acts of sexual abuse. Examples include Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall.
- Fan Disservice: Hugh Bevell's arse.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Several.
- In the John Baskell memorial episode, we have the names of his old TV shows (which sound like the sort of crap Alan might have pitched, back in the day); the brief listings magazine descriptions of them that are shown on-screen emphasise this point.
- In that same episode, quite a few of the tweets on Simon's screen include the #JohnGone hashtag, which Alan had suggested; rather surprisingly, he doesn't pick up on this.
- When Alan links his tablet up with Simon's screen and flips through his pictures, there are several ones of naked pregnant women, and a couple of Noel Edmonds.
- Alan's dressing room has a picture of round-the-world sailor Ellen MacArthur.
- One of the tweets received after Alan's rant at the end of series 2 compares it to Howard Beale's "mad as hell" rant in Network.
- Funny Background Event: A few.
- A few of the tweets shown on Simon's screen (when he gets it to work) are either rife with spelling mistakes or bear no relation whatsoever to what's being discussed on the show.
- Jennie and Simon give puzzled looks to each other and the crew when the camera isn't on them while Alan goes off on his tangents which bear little or no relation to what's being discussed on the show.
- During one of Alan's outdoor pieces to camera, an off-camera passer-by can be heard to shout: "AH-HAAA!", an occurrence which is repeated when he runs out of the studio in the climax to series 2.
- Paying close attention the background in several shots during Alan's bungling attempt to fit up Monty Don for accepting bribes shows an older man and a younger woman getting quite frisky with each other, with the implication being that Alan is accidentally exposing someone's tryst with his mistress or a call-girl to the entire nation.
- Grammar Nazi: in Series 2 Episode 4, Alan and Jennie report that a woman has written into the show to complain about their use of split infinitives. When the camera stops, it's clear that neither of them are impressed by this.
- Headscratchers: There are doubtless a few people In-Universe who are wondering how a failed chat show host from The '90s who accidentally killed one of his guests on live TV (and who has subsequently been unheard-of outside local radio in Norfolk) has managed to get a job as one of the main presenters on a daytime TV show on The BBC. Although it is explained in-universe why there was a vacancy (temporary at first) for a male presenter on This Time, no explanation is provided for why Alan was chosen over someone like, say, Sam (who is stated to have been a guest presenter of the show in the past). Sam's presence in the second episode, in which he is partly promoting a recent project, would seem to imply scheduling conflicts got in the way in his case.
- Also ... Simon's prank over the blackface photos. Just a joke that got out of hand, or revenge for Alan's constant bullying? It certainly seems a little different from Simon's usual line of humour.
- He's Back!: After over two decades in the wilderness of local radio, Alan Partridge returns to hosting a show on BBC TV.
- Hidden Depths: On occasions, Simon actually ends up on the presenting sofa. Once there, he's shown to have a fairly natural presenting nature. Alan, of course, is not happy about this — and is quick to pick up on (and point out) the minor faults that Simon makes due to his inexperience with the world of TV broadcasting, even though Alan himself makes similar mistakes.
- Alan's marksmanship, previously mentioned in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, gets a mention in the SAS feature. He does manage to get two killing shots on each of the four targets ... the only problem is, he shot the four hostage targets rather than the four terrorist targets. Still, pretty impressive since this is Alan we're talking about here.
- Hoist By Their Own Petard: A couple of examples.
- A subtle one occurs in the John Baskell memorial episode when Sam Chatwin steals Alan's place on the presenters' sofa, forcing Alan to sit on the guests' sofa. This plays into Alan's hands when the tweets about John start to expose his true nature, embarrassing Jennie and Sam who've spent most of the episode emphasising how friendly they were with John; the main screen gets blocked, but the tweets are still visible on Simon's screen, which Alan would not have been able to read from had he been sitting on the presenters' sofa.
- In a segment on the expansion of Heathrow Airport (sorry, "adding a third runway"), Ruth Duggan slightly snidely catches Alan when he comments that the proposal will add "billions" to the economy by pedantically pointing out that he didn't specify whether he was talking about pounds or a different currency — despite this being pretty clear in context, as he was talking about the British (sorry, UK) economy. When she, in turn, notes than an objection is that it will have negative impacts on the health of "thousands", he immediately picks her up on her imprecision by demanding she clarify whether she's talking about thousands of humans or other possible flora and fauna that could be affected. She's clearly seething to have to clarify, but can't call Alan out on the obviousness and how childish he's being without facing the same charge regarding her own pettiness.
- Again with Ruth, in one episode she's agreeing wholeheartedly with Jennie's viewpoints and automatically dismissing everything Alan says as per usual ... until Alan reveals that his and Jennie's notes have 'accidentally' gotten swapped somehow, meaning that it turns out that Ruth actually agreed with all of Alan's viewpoints. She's again clearly fuming at Alan trapping her like that.
- How Did You Get It?: Alan asks this of audience member Ted when he sees that the latter is wearing a tooth badge identical to his own; this is the only time the badge, which Alan wears on his lapel in most episodes, gets mentioned.
- Hypocrite: Alan (obviously), but other than him, we have...
- "Mickey", the masked hacktivist who Alan interviews in the first episode. He lambasts Alan and, having hacked his workplace and personal computer, proceeds to humiliate him by reading out pitiful and embarrassing details about him on air. When Alan gets fed up and reveals who "Mickey" himself really is, however, his response is to complain about agreeing to do the interview under conditions of privacy and storm off in a huff.
- After spending the entire episode waxing lyrical over how close they were to the recently-deceased John Baskell and overtly using this as a tool to push Alan further away from any chance of continuing to host the show, both Jennie and Sam instantly try to distance themselves from Baskell when it's revealed that he had a habit of sexually harassing women. Alan doesn't let them wriggle off the hook so easily, however. That said, Alan isn't exactly much better since he's also been trying to jump onto the "I knew John" bandwagon all episode, but ironically his ineptitude in doing so works in his favour for once.
- The part of Alan's rant in the final episode which isn't about how the audience of This Time is by and large made up of idiots is about how the BBC is largely made up of condescending elitists who make a big deal in public about caring about the opinions of the viewers while privately viewing them with sneering contempt.
- Insistent Terminology: Alan, being Alan, is only too happy to call others out on using incorrect terminology, but is clearly annoyed whenever anyone calls him out on the same thing. Ruth Duggan has a similar problem, although this may be Alan-specific in her case.
- Intoxication Ensues: Happens to Alan when he drinks too much in the cocktail feature.
- It's All About Me: Alan has a long track record of making everything about him. Jennie, for her part, is pretty good at making everything all about her. Sam is also an embodiment of this trope, which is what eventually causes him and Jennie to break up, as she realises that the most important person in Sam's life is and always will be Sam himself.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Alan remains a dick throughout the series, but he's not always the one in the wrong.
- He's clearly only doing it for self-serving reasons (to increase his chances of remaining on the show), but the way he refuses to let Jennie and Sam off the hook when they try to sweep the Twitter revelations about John Baskell's sexual misconduct under the rug and distance themselves from him is a rare heroic moment for Alan.
- He's entirely right to point out that celebrity guest chef Ralphie Moore should have read his health and safety briefing before coming on the show and not prepared food with oysters, which Alan is allergic to.
- In his interactions with Ruth Duggan, he's often the one trying to be professional and get through the segment, whereas Ruth responds to even reasonable comments and observations he makes with knee-jerk contradiction and dismissiveness (though in turn Alan keeps getting derailed by his frustration and dragging out the conflict longer than it needs to be).
- It was tactless and self-defeating of him, but let's face it; his rant in the Series 2 finale about how the viewing audience of the show is largely composed of banal idiots whose trite and pointless nattering on social media doesn't contribute anything of worth to the world and how the show's production team in particular (and the BBC in general) is largely composed of smug elitists hypocritically pretending to care deeply about their audience while privately viewing them with contempt, and who are only interested in stirring up endless noise and conflict from said banal idiots purely for the sake of ratings, is entirely on the mark.
- Alan sometimes ends up on the receiving end of this too. The security guard who won't let him back into the building after he runs out into the street following his rant is only doing his job (part of which involves making sure that people without security passes are not allowed inside), even if he is being a bit of a jerk about it.
- Manipulative Bitch: It's only hinted at with Jennie — until the final episode of series two, when Alan advises her to take advantage of the post-#MeToo climate as much as she can in order to advance her own career, to which she responds by telling him that that's what she's already doing.
- Mirror Character: A constant undercurrent of the series is that Alan, for all his pettiness and venal narcissism, isn't actually that much worse from the other celebrities who host and appear on This Time; he's just less skilled at covering up said pettiness and narcissism with charm and apparent professionalism. This is made especially clear in episode two, in which John Baskell's career highlights are heavily implied to be not that much better than Alan's various half-witted program ideas that he pitched to Tony Hayers in I'm Alan Partridge. Sam Chatwin, meanwhile, is clearly only where he is due to nepotism rather than merit. Alan, John and Sam are all shown at various moments to exhibit barely-concealed lechery towards Jennie — except that where Alan constantly bungles things up, John and Sam are sufficiently smooth to get the audience (and producers) on side. While less immediately apparent, the ladies don't exactly look that much better either; Jennie has her own self-serving tendencies and it's implied she can be a bit of a bitchy prima donna behind the scenes, while Ruth Duggan shares Alan's petty refusal to back down from an argument.
- Nepotism: Much as he tries to pretend otherwise, Sam Chatwin clearly only has a media career because his father was the Head of Factual Programming at the BBC.
- Never My Fault: After getting pulled over by the police for a traffic offence and refusing to take a breathalyser test, Alan gets arrested. His response is to make a news report for This Time about his "ordeal" in which he presents himself as a blameless victim of police over-zealousness and brutality. However, the video footage in the report clearly shows that the cop who pulled him over did so because he really had committed a traffic offence (ignoring a "no turning" sign), following which his behaviour gave the cop reasonable grounds to assume that he may have been intoxicated (which, as it happened, he wasn't — although as he refused to take the breathalyser test, the cop had no choice but to take him into custody).
- Noodle Incident: We get a few references to feature segments that aren't shown, such as Alan shouting through a letterbox at the home of the man who invented the hand-dryer, Alan interviewing Malala Yousafzai while cycling around Oxford with her on a tandem bicycle, the disabled guy who needed his house repaired, and Jennie in a leotard.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: When Sam is interviewed from Egypt, it's ostensibly about his new series commemorating the centenary of Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, but his waxing lyrical about how Carter's persistence eventually paid off is clearly more to do with him trying to get back with Jennie.
- Pet the Dog: When Alan finds out that Jennie and Sam have split up, he genuinely tries to talk nicely to her, and they actually bond for once. It's the closest this show gets to a genuine Friendship Moment.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Played with. John Baskell isn't actually revealed to be dead until the second episode, but the illness which leads to his death creates the opening on This Time that Alan fills, thus starting the plot.
- Prison Episode: In the second episode of the second series, Alan — already shown to have voluntarily worn a probation tag which he didn't realise (or wasn't told) followed his every movement — goes to prison (as part of a feature). Actually, it's a young offenders' institution, as Alan asked not to be sent to an actual prison, but still.
- Product Placement: Alan has previous form on this, even though he's on the BBC, a broadcaster which frowns on such activity due to it being publicly funded. To deflect attention from himself, he tries to entrap Monty Don into accepting a bribe to plug gardening equipment from a particular company on a new gardening show, which goes about as well as you'd expect. Later on, he calls Simon out on this when the latter thanks British Gas for helping out with a feature.
- Promoted Fanboy: At play In-Universe when Alan does a feature on the SAS and gets to take part in a mock hostage situation. He's clearly enjoying himself as he basically gets to play out one of his (non-sexual) fantasies, but it goes badly, with the debriefing officer giving a scathing assessment of his performance in which he shot the four hostage targets, not the four terrorist targets.
- Pungeon Master: Alan. In his head, at any rate. Simon tries to embody this trope as well.
- Ripped from the Headlines: When trying to convince the producer that he can get Princess Anne on the show, Alan refers to Prince Andrew's November 2019 reputation-destroying interview with Emily Maitlis (who had previously appeared on the show As Herself).
- Romance on the Set: In-Universe, and rather forced; after picking up on the fact that Simon has mentioned Lisa from the office a few times, Alan calls her out into the studio and basically bullies Simon into asking her out. Both parties are clearly uncomfortable, but surprisingly, Lisa says yes. No more is heard of this, though.
- In the second series, we get another in-universe example with Sam pulling a Wacky Marriage Proposal on Jennie. She accepts, but they later break up.
- Alan flirting with Tiff the make-up artist is a more downplayed example. At first.
- Running Gag:
- Simon's constant technological failures (although he does get better over time) and naivety with the world of live TV broadcasting.
- The opening credits gradually become more Alan-focused as he manages, through luck and ruthlessness, to wrangle more and more control over the show.
- Alan, seeking audience members to interview, inevitably picks Ted, a super-fan from Sunderland who has a rather troubled life and an inability to clearly get to the point which ends up distracting Alan from whatever he was supposed to be interviewing him about.
- Speaking of the audience, there seem to be fewer of them each time the camera cuts to them note .
- Roving reporter Ruth Duggan has an old grudge against Alan for an off-screen incident where he accidentally spilled shandy on her, which she expresses on-air by contradicting every single thing he says or asks her. Even when it makes her look somewhat unprofessional (like when Alan repeats word-for-word something Jennie said earlier and which Ruth had agreed with when Jennie said it).
- Each episode hints at a different sexual fetish or appetite that Alan apparently possesses and tries to keep hidden; in one episode he is transfixed by a female interviewee's hands, in another several nude photos of pregnant women are revealed to be on his iPad, in another he alludes to a recurring dream he has about visiting a prostitute, and so on.
- Scunthorpe Problem: At play when Alan visits the British Library and interviews a linguist for a feature about swearing. Inevitably, given the subject matter and the fact that this is a feature for daytime TV, several words that she says are bleeped out — but one of them is quite clearly "country".
- Shout-Out: A few...
- This being Alan Partridge, there are a few nods to James Bond.
- One of the guests on the show is a Daniel Craig lookalike who was in Quantum of Solace.
- In the SAS feature, Alan consciously models his firing stance on what he's seen in the Bond films, to the bemusement of the SAS guys.
- Alan and Tiff discuss the status of Moneypenny, who Alan is adamant is "just a secretary" even though she's shown wielding a gun in the most recent film (which, going on when the episode was first broadcast, would have been Spectre note ).
- During his night in the young offenders' institution, Alan recreates the Steve McQueen bouncing a baseball against the wall scene from The Great Escape, albeit with a table-tennis ball.
- At one point, Simon tries to cram in as many Queen song titles as he can into the converation as part of a charity challenge. Alan takes a while to clue into this, but once he does, he joins in.
- Alan claims to have been a Blue Peter badge holder when he was 13, although his story of how he got it sounds unlikely, in addition to which he quickly follows it with an explanation of why he no longer has the badge.
- The theme tune from The World At War is played during Alan's Spitfire flight note .
- When the topless Punkbitch protesters invade the set, Alan tries to chase them away, but then shouts at the camera crew not to film him, as it'll look like a Benny Hill routine.
- Alan's rant at the end of series 2 is consciously modelled on Howard Beale's "mad as hell" rant in Network; if you look closely at the viewer tweets on Simon's screen, you'll see that one of them even compares the two.
- This being Alan Partridge, there are a few nods to James Bond.
- Shout-Out to Shakespeare: In his video interview, Hugh Bevell reads a passage from Antony and Cleopatra, although the effect is ruined by the fact that he is shown to be not wearing any trousers (or underpants) while he does so.
- The Show Must Go On: Rather than seek medical attention after suffering an allergic reaction, Alan decides to continue with the show, leading to him performing with the Quavers despite having badly swollen lips. A big-lipped Alan-gator moment, if you will.
- Show Within a Show: The premise of this show concerns Alan Partridge co-presenting a fictional daytime TV show called This Time. Said show is as a parody of like as The One Show and Good Morning Britain.
- We also have War Machines (Sam's new history show that he's plugging) and — something of a Freeze-Frame Bonus — various TV shows that John used to present (Britain by Balloon, Scotland's Strongest Man, Fly Tip Squad, a holiday show in which the host samples the cooked breakfasts in various resorts, etc), all of which sound like the sort of shows that Alan himself might have pitched.
- Smarmy Host: Alan, of course. Prior to him was John Baskell, who was clearly better at hiding his smarm than Alan, but who was much worse as a person if the tweets Alan reads out after his death are any indication.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: It isn't overt, but Jennie due to her role as an Expy for the gorgeous young women who end up presenting current affairs shows alongside much older, less attractive men and for whom their beauty is emphasized and played up no matter how talented they are at actually presenting. She's very leggy; one unseen segment has her donning a leotard, and Alan, John Baskell and Sam Chatwin are varying degrees of lecherous toward her.
- Stepford Smiler: Since she's a daytime TV presenter, Jennie has a rather superficial grin in the first place. The more she has to put up with Alan, the more fixed it looks.
- Studio Audience: There is one, and they are occasionally seen. Ted, the guy from Sunderland whose love of the show appears to have had severe repercussions on his personal life, is the audience member who gets the most air-time.
- Stylistic Suck: Oh so much, as per usual for an Alan Partridge production. Averted in that This Time, prior to Alan, was clearly a middle-of-the-road, unexceptional daytime current events show watched largely by older people. It has the usual set-up of an experienced male host and a young, attractive female host, manufactured banter and reports that fail to go in-depth and are forgotten by the next segment — all in all, fairly typical. Once Alan comes onboard, however, things start to fall apart due to his...
- petty nature constantly surfacing;
- off-topic tirades;
- inability to understand the tone of each segment;
- shameless self-promotion;
- uneasy way with people;
- petty rivalries with other people on the show;
- insistence on bringing Sidekick Simon on as a comedic element and giving him far too much to handle, then frequently becoming outraged when Simon fails to meet Alan's standards; and
- clearly having been given too much creative control over some of the pre-recorded segments — for example, what should have been an easy-going report about the Peasants' Revolt involving a battle re-enactment group becomes a gory fight scene right out of movies like Braveheart, and the interview with one of the last surviving women who flew Spitfires during World War II note ends up being all about Alan getting to fly in a Spitfire.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the cocktail segment, Alan drinks too much (Jennie merely sips at her cocktails, while Alan downs two and then starts on one of her discarded ones), starts slurring his speech and then falls asleep on the sofa at the end of the episode, forcing Simon to step in to do the final piece to camera.
- Title Drop: The Quavers (the vocal harmony group who appear in the fifth episode) refer to the show as being "This Time with Alan Partridge", to Jennie's bemusement (and Alan's unconvincing attempt to feign bemusement).
- Verbal Tic: Alan has a few, mostly involving mispronounced words.
- Wacky Marriage Proposal: Sam pulls one of these on Jennie by giving her a copy of his latest book with a ring concealed inside, a sure sign of his own narcissism.
- Wham Line: Near the end of the final episode of series two, Alan discovers that pictures of him in blackface (well, too much fake tan make-up) have been leaked to the tabloid press and makes the ill-advised decision to show them on TV so he can offer a weak excuse, jeopardising his career and costing him the chance to interview Princess Anne. Then we get this exchange, revealing that the images hadn't been leaked after all:Lynn: Simon's a bit worried. He made a joke that went wrong.Alan: Simon's hit or miss, he knows that.Lynn: It's not like that. The thing with the pictures.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: As is standard for a TV show of this sort, there's little by way of follow-up on most of the features as the show moves on to other topics. We also hear no more of Lisa from the office after Simon asks her out.
