In good news for fans of the sort of brilliant, dry celebrity satire epitomized by The Paul Reiser Show (GONE TOO SOON) as well as shows that actually embody that, such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Steve Coogan has confirmed that he is working again on the long-delayed Alan Partridge movie, with plans to shoot next year. If you’re a fan of Curb or the discomfort humor of The Office, UK edition, but you’re somehow unfamiliar with Partridge, stop whatever you’re doing and go track down the DVDs of both the talk-show parody Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge and its follow-up I’m Alan Partridge, and then you can get back to driving a bus or performing surgery or whatever. As you’ll see, Coogan’s narcissistic yet woefully lame TV/radio host and his efforts to make the most of his fringe celebrity and assert his own hipness are a precursor to both of those shows, while being uniquely, hilariously tragicomic in their own right.
Now that you’re back, we can get on with the news: Coogan says that he’s currently working on the script with original collaborators Armando Ianucci (In The Loop) and Pete Baynham (Borat), although, of course, there aren’t many more details than that. The project has been rumored for a few years now, with a storyline even being passed around in 2005 that involved Alan dealing with an Al-Qaeda invasion—though after the July 7 bombings in London, that idea was understandably scrapped. Since then, Ianucci has confirmed that the script will definitely not feature a long-rumored storyline that involved Partridge visiting the U.S., so forget about that. And of course, Coogan recently revived the character for the Foster’s-sponsored web show Mid Morning Matters, which wrapped up its second run on March 11. That series found Partridge back in radio, working as a DJ in his hometown of Norwich, so any film will presumably pick up from there. Anyway, you now have a little over a year to catch up on all this stuff, so get cracking.