iTunes TV Show Review | Partrimilgrimage - The Alan Partridge Specials

My love affair with Apple products is sullied somewhat by the iTunes Store’s habitual overpricing of television series – as a general rule, I can buy a high-definition Blu-ray box set for a fraction of the price of a series’ iTunes standard-definition series pass. However, I’ve recently found my way to a few baffling bargains, ranging from the Outnumbered and Doctor Who Christmas specials in HD for just a couple of quid apiece to a Partridge in a maple tree – or, that is, an HD Partrimilgrimage for a mere £3.99.

Originally broadcast on Sky Atlantic last summer, this collection of Alan Partridge oddities defies expectations as well as pronunciation. After being a little disappointed with his Mid Morning Matters, I was delighted to see the erstwhile Knowing Me, Knowing You presenter back at the top of his vainglorious game as he introduced viewers to his native Norfolk – or, as he so logically puts it, the “Wales of the East” – in the bundle’s first instalment, Welcome to the Places of My Life.

Punctuated with blasts of what sounds like a cross between Steeleye Span and a pissed Steve Coogan on karaoke, this travelogue exudes pomp and vanity throughout, and probably contains as many barbed Partridge one-liners in its forty minutes as did the whole series of Mid Morning Matters. Whether he’s clarifying that the “home of the Broads” isn’t an allusion to a “refuge for fallen prostitutes” (fallen prostitutes?), or likening the black death to HIV, only airborne – “Let me put that in context for you: flying AIDS!” – Partridge is more despicable than he’s ever been, and this time there’s nobody to rein him in. With his days at the BBC long behind him, Welcome to the Places of My Life was produced by Partridge’s own Pear Tree Productions – a truth that is shamelessly evident from the programme’s first substantive interview, which employs the clumsiest of editing techniques to try and mask Partridge’s weakness as a swimmer. Such trickery presents itself again later in the show, as a pensive vicar’s pauses are dramatically curtailed in post-production – so brutally so, in fact, that for a moment I thought my Apple TV had started dropping frames. What really stings is that the poor clergyman’s pauses might not have been so protracted, had he not been faced with questions and challenges such as “What do you think a soul looks like? Draw one!”

My favourite part of the programme though is the segment that sees Partridge begrudgingly try to broach the class divide. Fancying himself as a market grocer, down-to-earth Alan decides to turn his hand to selling fruit – a task that the gently-joshing stallholders don’t expect him to succeed in, much to his disgust. “It’s menial work,” he spits, before waxing lyrical in a voiceover about how selling fruit was one of the easiest things he’s ever done, but without providing any convincing visual evidence of an actual sale. And, heckles raised, Partridge doesn’t stop there, launching himself into one of his disproportionately vicious – and highly amusing – verbal slammings. “These stallholders, with their fast and loose approach to grammar, and particularly their cavalier use of apostrophes, were clearly people living on the very fringes of society,” he warns with undue horror, no doubt having forgotten his omission of the hyphen in mid-morning when he begat Mid Morning Matters.

But as a man “whose statutory rights are important” to him, Partridge doesn’t dwell long in the marketplace, quickly moving on to a car dealership where he finds himself a Range Rover to test-drive, a vehicle that he’s keen to stress is male -“I’m not driving a girl!”-, in so doing eschewing the centuries-old tradition of feminising transport. Scenes of Partridge and an unfortunate salesman trying to talk over each other as they wind around country lanes, firing their trenchant views on automatic and manual differential locks at each other, are woven betwixt guides to skiing in England’s flattest county; child actors admiring “substitute trees” in illusion-wrecked flashbacks to Partridge’s youth; and even Partridge’s stab at being Andrew Marr as he dramatises “historic” events occurring inside Norwich City Hall, such as the furore caused by the proposed extension to city centre parking fees beyond 7pm. It’s all vintage Partridge, but fresh and in 1080p.

The collection’s second episode sees Partridge appear on Open Books with Martin Bryce, where he’s interviewed by fellow author Chris Beale – a man whom Partridge has so little respect for, he can’t even get his name right, let alone make any sort of positive comment about his work. Studio-bound and slower burning by nature, the intimacy of the programme highlights every awkward silence; the lack of spectacle causes every Partridge faux-pas to linger for longer. Of course, as a reader (and reviewer) of I,Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan, inevitably its author’s emotive readings didn’t engross me as much as they would have someone who has yet to tackle the tome, but there was still plenty to entertain me here as Partridge’s transparent stooges and obsessive fan (singular!) make their respective presences felt, and Partridge shares his plans for his next book – a “What if…?” novel set on board the RMS Titanic, designed both to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of its sinking and to make a powerful statement against speed cameras.

Equidistant between An Idiot Abroad and I’m Alan Partridge, this Partrimilgrimage is one metaphysical journey worth making. And for £3.99, it’s cheaper than the trek to Bodh Gaya. Or, for that matter, Cromer.