Steve Coogan Raises Silliness to High Art
Silliness raised to an art form. This is the brilliance of Steve Coogan. Anyone can be silly. It’s one of the first forms of humor that kids learn. To find silliness that is not simply immature or careless, but is nuanced and detailed, is rare. Steve Coogan has been bringing nuanced, detailed, silly humor, particularly in the form of his character Alan Partridge, for nearly 20 years in Britain. Known mostly through word-of-mouth from hardcore comedy fans here in the States, it’s about time the rest of America caught on to Coogan’s crowning acheivement: the socially awkward chat show host Alan Partridge.
America will finally have its chance when Coogan’s next movie, Alan Partridge, opens on April 4. Steve Coogan has built a career on character-driven TV shows. Starting with Paul Calf, a regular old out-of-work bloke who shared his video diary with us and his sister Pauline (also played by Coogan), through Dr. Terrible, the host of a mock-horror series and up to Tommy Saxondale, a former roadie who now owns a pest control business, Coogan always created full-blooded characters. They fucked up, they weren’t always likeable and sometimes they were downright silly. Coogan’s characters could be broad, or they could be subtle. But they were always, always funny.
But then there was Alan Partridge. First on BBC Radio 4 and then in the TV shows Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge and I’m Alan Partridge, Alan was Coogan’s masterpiece. You can’t help but feel sorry for Alan, while simultaneously wanting to smack him. Self-involvement, name-dropping, superficiality and massive insecurity are not qualities that you’d value in a friend. But somehow, Alan became a friend. He’s the guy that’s always been in your life, but you don’t remember why. He hangs around just outside the circle as everyone else is talking and jumps in with an ill-timed, politically incorrect joke that causes everyone to question who invited him in the first place. But no party would be fun without him.
This isn’t the person you’d expect to be a successful talk show host. This detail is actually proven to be true time and again, since Alan never becomes completely successful. He always manages to hilariously sabotage himself right before he achieves the big success he is constantly dreaming about, like when he insulted the head of a TV network during a lunch where he was asking the executive for a second season to his talk show. If running through a restaurant with a hunk of cheese on a fork during a business lunch isn’t going to sabotage your career, nothing will.
Alan is the embodiment of silly. It’s probably his most endearing quality. But it’s Coogan’s practiced and honed version of silly. As Steve Coogan has matured as a writer and performer, Alan Patridge has matured with him, evolving and yet never disappointing the fans who love him as he is. Coogan has so meticulously made Alan a full and specific character that you can watch those TV shows over and over again and still find something new about Alan to marvel over and laugh at. It’s as if Coogan has taken the American approach of method acting and combined it with the British sense of silliness to create something completely original.
And the result is Alan Partridge.
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