Patrick Marber understands how to make a character's failings cause trouble. We value the discipline of his comedy and the sharpness of his dialogue, though the sustained embarrassment of his Alan Partridge work can wear us down.
Fi1m perspective
Alan Partridge is still trying to be the host while the programme around him grows stranger. In Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge (1994), Patrick Marber and Armando Iannucci make that failure to understand the source of the comedy. We laughed because Steve Coogan's presenter cannot manage a job whose basic requirements are obvious to everyone watching. The familiar television format lets us spot each mistake without a character explaining it. It is disciplined writing, even when the proceedings become surreal.
Marber's early comedy collaborations also included On the Hour and The Day Today (1994). With Iannucci and Coogan on Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, the writing gives the performer a recognisable task to get wrong. Alan's limitations keep creating fresh difficulties, so the programme can grow stranger without losing its central joke. We would give Marber credit for that practical understanding of how a scene moves as well as for the dialogue.
The turn towards theatre brought his first play, Dealer's Choice (1995), followed by Closer (1997). He adapted the latter for Mike Nichols's Closer (2004), carrying his sharp, unsentimental dialogue into a film about desire and betrayal. His adaptation of Zoë Heller's novel for Notes on a Scandal (2006) depends on a similarly close understanding of people's weaknesses. These are harsher subjects than an inept television presenter, but the interest in flawed people is recognisable. We value the attention he pays to why people behave badly.
The reservation is about how much discomfort we want in one sitting. The awkwardness in Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge can be tiring, even when we admire the writing that produces it. We recommend it for that precision, with pauses between episodes if embarrassment is not a pleasure in itself. Even a good joke about bad television need not occupy the whole evening.
Biography
Patrick Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, actor and screenwriter. He began his career as a stand-up comedian before becoming a writer and performer on the radio series On the Hour and Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, and their television adaptations The Day Today (1994) and Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge (1994).
Marber's first play, Dealer's Choice (1995), won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Comedy. His subsequent works include the plays Closer (1997) and Howard Katz (2001), and screenplays for the films Closer (2004), Asylum (2005) and Notes on a Scandal (2006). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002.
