'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa' directed by Declan Lowney

Alan Partridge, for those of you that are unfamiliar with his small screen outings, is an egotistical, seedy and unsympathetic fictional radio DJ. He is nonetheless portrayed in altogether more generous terms by this film adaptation, which, to my relief, also maintains the wonderfully crap veneer of the TV series.

In truth, a character such as Alan (played by Steve Coogan) could only emerge from a country as self-loathing as Britain. He is a man who channels many of the anxieties and petty concerns of the Daily Mail reading section of our population. Yet, he is so harshly drawn that he always verges on caricature, which is where the humour of the absurd hostage thriller plot of this film comes into its own.

On a normal day at North Norfolk Digital (Alan's Radio Station), Alan finds out that the station is about be taken over by a ruthless corporation. In swift order, he locates a list of possible targets for redundancy. Distressed to find that he is on it, he instead targets the other man on the list Pat Farrell (played with a kind of unhinged menace by Colm Meaney) who, unaware of this betrayal, strikes up a kind of bonhomie with Alan regarding his coming dismissal.

It is at this point, during a launch party for the re-branded radio station, with the shockingly meaningless post modern new name 'Shape: The Way You Want It To Be' that Pat Farrell takes several hostages at gunpoint. This is an attempt to blackmail the new owners into giving him his job back. He decides that he will only communicate with the police through Alan as a mediator. This, of course, is an opportunity for publicity that Alan cannot resist.

What follows is an hour of the pithy one liners and public humiliations that the TV series had previously mastered. Alan, not naturally acclimatised to the sensitivities of others, offers his usual mix of haughty derision and contempt for the general public when forced to continue his show at the point of a gun by Pat Farrell.

All of the other hostages are a mixture of the ignorant and the foolish as only Steve Coogan could come up with. They include the new owner of the radio station, Jason Tresswell, who gnaws at Alan's ego as he praises him for the way that he is handling Farrell. Appealing to the better part of Alan's nature is his agent Lynn (Felicity Montagu) who, as always, is patient to a fault with Alan's ill treatment.

Another series regular, Michael (Simon Greenall) makes his usual strange cameo appearing from a cupboard and Phil Cornwell offers an excellent turn as Dave Clifton, a drug addled DJ in permanent rehab. It is a testament to how well written the script is that Alan Partridge often comes across as one of the lesser grotesques on display.

So, this excellent British film is really very entertaining. I do not believe it will necessarily travel well, given the low tech nature of the comedy and the local jokes in the film. Nonetheless, it deserves box office success in the UK for adding an altogether more sympathetic dimension to the wonderfully understated awfulness of the world of Alan Partridge.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the picture used in this article and will remove it at the request of the rights holder.