Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (Declan Lowney, 2013)

To say that there is a chequered history behind the crossing over of popular TV comics to features is somewhat of an understatement. It works better when, as in this case, it is their best-loved character that makes the transition, but it's nevertheless rare that the character survives unscathed. The cheesy silliness of Police Squad, for instance, was great in the comfortable confines of the half-hour episode and increasingly laboured when stretched out to ninety minutes with the same plot and characters.
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa astutely gets around this by moving the persona on, making him more fully rounded, so that while his little-Englander peevishness and buffoonish delusions are still there, it is less of an outright caricature and more of a sympathetic observation, which stands up better to the tests of the full-length adaptation. Is Coogan getting sentimental about his monstrous creation? If so, it's a fond farewell. It's still far funnier at any rate than just about any other film you'll have seen in the last few years.

7/10