Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Ratings248
rumour-mill's rating
Reviews27
rumour-mill's rating
'This Time...' mixes the best bits of 'Knowing Me, Knowing You', 'Mid Morning Matters' and 'Scissored Isle' into a cringe-laden, endlessly quotable satire of magazine programmes - namely 'The One Show' and 'Good Morning Britain'.
The format is the perfect showcase for Partridge in all his iterations. You have his roaming reporter-style segments, which cover an eclectic mix of subjects - from sleep disorders to hygiene to swear words - and sees Alan trying his best (and failing) to elevate light entertainment fodder into something loftier. You have his in-the-studio interviews alongside a perfectly cast co-host, Jennie (Susannah Fielding), whose sunny, polished presenting style highlights Alan's inherent awkwardness, and gives Sidekick Simon (Tim Key) a chance to show his own fish-out-of-water fumbles. And you have occasional glimpses behind the scenes, allowing Alan to drop his on-camera persona and reveal his cynical ambition and backbiting, mainly in hushed exchanges with long-time assistant Lynn (Felicity Montagu).
There are so many subtle jokes and amusing characterisations that reward rewatching - fertive glances, strained inflections, silly wordplay, odd overdubs, and pauses that linger just long enough to make you uncomfortable. It's top-tier cringe comedy that should satisfy most long-time fans of Alan Partridge, and to me proves that the character is in safe hands with Coogan and the Gibbon brothers.
The format is the perfect showcase for Partridge in all his iterations. You have his roaming reporter-style segments, which cover an eclectic mix of subjects - from sleep disorders to hygiene to swear words - and sees Alan trying his best (and failing) to elevate light entertainment fodder into something loftier. You have his in-the-studio interviews alongside a perfectly cast co-host, Jennie (Susannah Fielding), whose sunny, polished presenting style highlights Alan's inherent awkwardness, and gives Sidekick Simon (Tim Key) a chance to show his own fish-out-of-water fumbles. And you have occasional glimpses behind the scenes, allowing Alan to drop his on-camera persona and reveal his cynical ambition and backbiting, mainly in hushed exchanges with long-time assistant Lynn (Felicity Montagu).
There are so many subtle jokes and amusing characterisations that reward rewatching - fertive glances, strained inflections, silly wordplay, odd overdubs, and pauses that linger just long enough to make you uncomfortable. It's top-tier cringe comedy that should satisfy most long-time fans of Alan Partridge, and to me proves that the character is in safe hands with Coogan and the Gibbon brothers.
Kleo is a strange thing. A revenge thriller. A spy drama. A period piece. And perhaps most of all, a black comedy.
It zips along at such a pace, you barely get a chance to collect your bearings. You need only blink and oh, we're in Spain. Blink: we're in Chile. Blink: we're back in East Germany.
And ex-Stasi assassin Kleo sets that pace, shooting, bombing and at one point sumo wrestling her way from one piece of the puzzle to the next, trying to get to the bottom of who imprisoned her and why.
Along for the ride is her unlikely companion Sven, and their odd-couple partnership is giggle inducing. The whole series is very funny, very violent, and slickly edited, with some apt late-eighties needle-drops for good measure.
But really, the star of the show is Jella Haase as Kleo - she's sexy, strange, and oddly sympathetic. Just the perfect casting.
If you thought there was truth in the stereotype that Germans aren't funny, sit down and watch Kleo (and then maybe Der Tatortreiniger).
It zips along at such a pace, you barely get a chance to collect your bearings. You need only blink and oh, we're in Spain. Blink: we're in Chile. Blink: we're back in East Germany.
And ex-Stasi assassin Kleo sets that pace, shooting, bombing and at one point sumo wrestling her way from one piece of the puzzle to the next, trying to get to the bottom of who imprisoned her and why.
Along for the ride is her unlikely companion Sven, and their odd-couple partnership is giggle inducing. The whole series is very funny, very violent, and slickly edited, with some apt late-eighties needle-drops for good measure.
But really, the star of the show is Jella Haase as Kleo - she's sexy, strange, and oddly sympathetic. Just the perfect casting.
If you thought there was truth in the stereotype that Germans aren't funny, sit down and watch Kleo (and then maybe Der Tatortreiniger).
Severance is like if you took the concept from a Black Mirror episode, expanded it into a full series, and actually made it more than just a lazy, technophobic fable.
The creators have squeezed so much humour and style out of what could have been a portentous, gloomy story in the wrong hands. It shouldn't be as funny as it is, nor as affecting, nor as beautifully filmed, edited and scored - yet it is.
Adam Scott is excellent in the lead role, showing he's got dramatic chops alongside the comic awkwardness of his Parks & Rec turn, but he's joined by an equally strong cast playing well-drawn characters full of pathos - especially John Turturro's Irving, who steals every scene.
Both the 'innie' and 'outie' world have a surreal, anachronistic quality to them, from the technology to the dialogue, that adds to this disconcerting, disorienting sense of artifice, that all is not as it seems, that this middle-of-nowhere town is under the sway of a techno-cult, and we're not sure how deep the rabbithole goes...
On that note, there are touches of The Matrix at its most satirical, and maybe moreso The Truman Show, Westworld, and Wayward Pines. But Severance keeps things small-scale and at the human level, never letting the technology upstage the people at the centre of the story.
In the first series, Severance explores a range of ideas and conflicts that would arise from this artificial compartmentalisation of self. And it gradually, deftly reveals more and more of this universe and its characters, with a freshly awoken Helly R as our introduction.
It's a joy to watch: the perfect blend of black comedy, office satire and sci-fi dystopia.
The creators have squeezed so much humour and style out of what could have been a portentous, gloomy story in the wrong hands. It shouldn't be as funny as it is, nor as affecting, nor as beautifully filmed, edited and scored - yet it is.
Adam Scott is excellent in the lead role, showing he's got dramatic chops alongside the comic awkwardness of his Parks & Rec turn, but he's joined by an equally strong cast playing well-drawn characters full of pathos - especially John Turturro's Irving, who steals every scene.
Both the 'innie' and 'outie' world have a surreal, anachronistic quality to them, from the technology to the dialogue, that adds to this disconcerting, disorienting sense of artifice, that all is not as it seems, that this middle-of-nowhere town is under the sway of a techno-cult, and we're not sure how deep the rabbithole goes...
On that note, there are touches of The Matrix at its most satirical, and maybe moreso The Truman Show, Westworld, and Wayward Pines. But Severance keeps things small-scale and at the human level, never letting the technology upstage the people at the centre of the story.
In the first series, Severance explores a range of ideas and conflicts that would arise from this artificial compartmentalisation of self. And it gradually, deftly reveals more and more of this universe and its characters, with a freshly awoken Helly R as our introduction.
It's a joy to watch: the perfect blend of black comedy, office satire and sci-fi dystopia.