Watch: Trailer for Alan Partridge’s new BBC show ‘This Time With Alan Partridge’

Steve Coogan first gifted the world with his parody of British television personalities in 1994, and is making an imminent return as the beloved character Alan Partridge for a six-part series entitled ‘This Time With Alan Partridge’ on BBC One, set to air on February 25.

Though the original TV installments centering around Partridge were spoofs of 90s talk shows and regional radio stations, this new series is set to focus on something a bit different. Coogan will star as Partridge once again, a bumbling but loveable presenter handed an unlikely career lifeline when he becomes the stand-in host of This Time, an evening weekday magazine show in the style of The One Show.

“This Time is the perfect shop window for a man of Alan’s gravitas and will, or should, see him finally recognised as one of the heavyweight broadcasters of his era,” a statement from BBC reads.

“The show itself is a heady mix of consumer affairs, current affairs, viewer interaction, highbrow interview and lightweight froth; very much the sweet spots for a man whose CV boasts over two decades of weekday local radio. And with an array of diverse subjects on the agenda, it promises the perfect fit for a man whose broadcasting style has been described as ‘equidistant between chit-chat and analysis’.”

Susannah Fielding (The Great Indoors, Black Mirror) is set to star opposite Coogan, taking on the role of Jennie Gresham, the co-host of This Time. Tim Key will return as Simon Denton and Felicity Montagu will also return as Partridge’s assistant Lynn Benfield.

In an interview with Chris Moyles on Radio X, Coogan spoke about returning to his role as Partridge, saying, “He’s parachuted in because the original presenter is unwell. So Alan’s been subbed in to the chair for that show and it starts to go his way. I think it passes muster with what we’ve done before. I watched it back in the edit and I laughed my head off. I’m not doing Alan [again] because I have to, I’m doing it because I still like it and I still find it funny.”

The show will reportedly tackle a range of current issues and hot-button topics. In an appearance on the podcast WTF, Coogan spoke about an episode that will center specifically on the MeToo movement.  “There’s a whole episode about that. That’s such a difficult topic for anyone to talk about for anyone to say anything about, but if you’re doing a character it weirdly gives you this licence to. You can get things wrong in a big way and it’s fine because it’s him doing it,” he said.

Coogan continued: “You’re not sanctioning or agreeing with what he’s saying, you’re saying ‘this guy gets things wrong’ so you have licence to do it. And this is the crucial thing, because you’ve got a comic character he can say stuff that you go, ‘that is so off message,’ but sometimes he can say stuff that’s true that I can’t say. So the fool can point something out that everyone secretly knows to be true.”

“What we do is we have him trying to jump on the bandwagon and say, you know, he says ‘Hey! I’ve made mistakes, I’ve stood on the side of the sidewalk and slow hand-clapped while I watch a woman try to parallel park, you know, and I feel bad about that. And now if I saw a woman doing it now, I would shout instructions’.”

“He’s sometimes ignorant and prejudiced but he tries to do the right thing. Early on we made him too predictably conservative a bit like shooting fish in a barrel – a caricature. Whereas now we do him as someone who realises that he’s got to get on message. He’s struggling to do the thing he’s supposed to.”

The first trailer for the show can be viewed below: