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Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle is another in the long line of Steve Coogan‘s character’s spin-offs and I can’t claim to have seen every last minute of his output, but what I have seen I’ve hugely enjoyed – apart from parts of I’m Alan Partridge Series 2 where he actually looked older than the later ‘Alpha Papa‘ movie, the film being the funniest thing Coogan has done since the first I’m Alan Partridge series, although anything with his character always has a lot to enjoy about it.
After a couple of regrettable gaffes, one on his radio show and the other at a corporate dinner, Alan lost some sponsorship deals and states it was the lowest point of his career (not when he shot the bloke dead on his “Knowing Me, Knowing You” chat show, then?)
Hence, he believes a ‘schism’ or a ‘chasm’ has former between the North and South, which he deems a ‘schasm’. However, he doesn’t help his case when he comes up to my home town of Manchester to claim that it’s “handicapped by poverty”. And it probably doesn’t help his journey as he travels up North with his dog, Seldom, who only eats boiled eggs. Be sure to open a window…
In order to make amends or… largely, to just prat about, Alan works a shift in Tesco, he encounters payday lender company boss Kevin Ruddock (John Thomson) and as he talks about his regular anxiety dream of being stuck in a lift with Labour MP Diane Abbott, a ‘#dianeabbott’ hashtag appears onscreen. It’ll be interesting to check the Twitter usage of this and the other random hashtags that pop up along the way.
Overall, I had to keep rewinding bits of the programme because I was laughing too much and Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle is possibly the first time we’ve NOT heard his famous catchphrase, too…
Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but you can find plenty of Alan Partridge’s output on Blu-ray and DVD. If you missed it, you can watch the episode on Sky.com, and click on the top-right image for the full-size version.
Score: 8/10
Directors: Neil Gibbons and Rob Gibbons
Producers: Dave Lambert and Ted Dowd
Writers: Steve Coogan, Neil Gibbons and Rob Gibbons
Cast:
Alan Partridge: Steve Coogan
Kevin Ruddock: John Thomson
David Paul: Ben Rufus Green
Pam: Jean Ellwood
Shakira: Rachel Bullen
James Havant-Brown: Miles Jupp
Darren: Tom Leonard
Paul: Danny Rodley
Jack: Adem Marshall
Gang Member 1: Louis Drogan
Gang Member 2: Cameron Drain
Mayor: Doon Mackichan
Joel Maidment: Karl Theobold
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.