At the tail end of a recent trip to London, I went to a club where comics were testing out material for the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe Festival (I can’t endorse the acts I saw, but for anyone attending I recommend Andy Zaltzman, whose weekly podcast with The Daily Show’s John Oliver speaks for itself). Leaving the show, I wondered what it would be like for young British comedians condemned to work in the shadow of the absurdly high standards set by the television, film, and radio work of Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris, and others associated with The Day Today, Brass Eye, Knowing Me Knowing You, and I’m Alan Partridge. Even if you managed to develop a funny and original television project which drew acclaim and carved out a place in the hearts of fans of British comedy, you then have to contend with films like In the Loop (perhaps the best written political comedy of the past decade), Four Lions (a fearless and brilliant comedy about homegrown terrorism), and The Trip, which Giles Harvey, in his piece for the New York Review of Books, is able to effortlessly place beside Philip Roth, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Luc Goddard.
The Trip, a film directed by Michael Winterbottom, but developed from a series for British television, follows Coogan and the Welsh comic/impressionist Rob Brydon on a gastronomical tour through the north of England. Harvey compares Coogan’s portrayal of himself to the television version of Larry David (Coogan a reflection of the character Alan Partridge; David tethered in large part to George Costanza), but immediately recognizes that this comparison is not quite on the mark:
With his fetishistic parochialism, supreme literal-mindedness, and rancid bourgeois complacency, Partridge was a parody not just of English talk show hosts but of contemporary England itself. As with Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers before him or David Brent of The Office after him, England embraced a character who mercilessly held a mirror up to its foibles. Partridge’s catchphrases (“Kiss my face!” “Jurassic Park!” “Ah-ha!”) are repeated with gusto in pubs and student union bars the country over.
The comedy and the human drama of The Trip are found in Coogan’s own discomfort with living in this shadow.
You can read Harvey’s piece about The Trip, as well as a glowing review from The New York Times to try and discern the broader implications of Steve Coogan’s body of work. But I think it better to echo the sentiment voiced by Tom Scharpling, who no doubt deserves the recognition of greatness that Coogan is receiving now, on this week’s Best Show on WFMU: “You put [The Office] up against Alan Partridge, it beats that thing up down and every which way….Viva Coogan!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlrMC5oBC6A
This post may contain affiliate links.
