Neil Gibbons is at his sharpest when he lets us notice Alan Partridge’s peculiarities without explaining them. His work with Rob Gibbons and Steve Coogan remains funny, but familiarity too often takes the place of fresh thinking.
Fi1m perspective
In the magazine photoshoot interview in How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge) (2025), fleeting details about Alan’s home tell us things the dialogue need not spell out. We laughed, and wanted more time to inspect the domestic oddities. Neil and Rob Gibbons, who write with Steve Coogan and direct the series together, are right to move on. Their scrappy mockumentary style makes these discoveries seem accidental, and the brevity keeps the joke from becoming an explanation.
It would be misleading to separate Neil’s contribution neatly from his brother’s. They established their sustained collaboration with Coogan as writers on Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge (2010), then co-wrote the feature Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013). By This Time with Alan Partridge (2019), they were combining writing and directing, a way of keeping the script’s peculiar tone intact in performance. The Witchfinder (2022), which they created and directed, took them beyond Partridge. Their principal task has nevertheless been to put a long-established character into new situations without losing his distinctive voice.
Coogan remains central to whether that arrangement works. In How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge), he keeps Alan recognisable through the blunders, even when the situation itself is thinly conceived. The brothers work closely with him and seek detailed performance notes, which suits comedy dependent on such specific behaviour. The writing still finds mistakes that feel personal to Alan, and those give us reasons to persevere beyond merely recognising an old favourite.
The reservation is that preserving Alan is sometimes treated as enough. The mental-health documentary premise ought to produce misunderstandings particular to its subject; too many of these jokes could fit another programme he might front. In those stretches, we can see the next mistake coming, and the directors’ apparent casualness cannot supply the missing surprise. This is uneven work, with an attention to character that the choice of situations does not consistently match. Watch for the domestic oddities, with modest expectations of the documentary around them.
Biography
Neil Gibbons is an English screenwriter, director and producer, who works primarily with his twin brother Rob Gibbons. The pair are from Sandbach in Cheshire and have collaborated extensively with Steve Coogan on Alan Partridge projects since 2010.
They co-wrote the 2013 feature film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and the series This Time with Alan Partridge (2019–2021), on which they also served as directors. Gibbons and his brother wrote and directed the 2025 BBC mockumentary series How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge). Their other credits include an episode of the HBO series Veep (2015) and the 2022 BBC sitcom The Witchfinder.
The brothers received a BAFTA Television Craft Award nomination for comedy writing for Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle (2017) and have been nominated again for their work on the 2025 series.
