This Time with Alan Partridge, episode 5, review: The team make television history (again) by bringing back absent jokes

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Get our The Life Cinematic email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Here the viewer finds his/her self in the same sort of dilemma – to laugh or be appalled; to laugh with or at Alan, or both.. For example: “I could tell it was my mother-in-law coming up the path because the mice were throwing themselves on the traps.” I can recall the late great Les Dawson delivering that on Sez Les in about 1976, I confess, and Partridge’s delivery was only marginally drier, and no less funny. However Alan then goes on to “explain” to Simon in exaggerated terms the supposed horror of this “contemptible stuff” – “suggesting that a mouse would rather take its own life than meet the mother-in-law”. This leaves Alan, like the rest of us, wondering “if that’s due to a truncated member or a distended testis”.. It’s old and, I guess, sexist in its way, but also amusing. Plan auto-renews until cancelled Try for free Talking of swellings, Alan’s lips become comically distended to sausage proportions when he accidentally samples an oyster dish prepared by one of the show’s guests.