Neil Gibbons, working with Rob Gibbons and Steve Coogan, understands how to make Alan Partridge's mistakes feel peculiar to Alan. We value that precision, but the writing becomes less dependable when recognising the character is supposed to be enough.
Fi1m perspective
In the magazine photoshoot interview in How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge) (2025), fleeting details about Alan's home get less time than we would like. We laughed at those domestic oddities and wanted longer to take them in. Neil and Rob Gibbons direct the sequence as though the details have slipped through unnoticed. Their scrappy mockumentary style works because they leave the details unexplained, trusting us to recognise why they belong to Alan. That is where we rate Neil's work most highly: in small observations that make this particular man funny.
He joined the Partridge writing team with Rob for Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge (2010), beginning a sustained collaboration with Coogan. Their writing credits include Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013), while their work with the character extends across television, film and podcasts. They wrote a fourth-series episode of Veep (2012) in 2015 and created The Witchfinder (2022). Our enthusiasm for Veep needs that qualification: Gibbons contributed to a programme we rate highly, rather than being responsible for its whole achievement. The Partridge work gives us much more to judge.
Coogan's performance matters to that judgement, because he makes Alan's mistakes feel personal even when the surrounding idea is thin. As co-writers, Coogan and the Gibbons brothers still know which peculiarities will keep us watching. In How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge), however, the mental-health premise does not produce enough jokes that need that subject. Too many could belong to almost any documentary Alan might present. The familiar behaviour remains amusing in places, but the writing too often lets us anticipate the next mistake rather than finding a fresh situation for it.
There is no need for Alan to become a different person to justify another programme. There does need to be more to discover about him, and the home-life glimpses provide it without asking Coogan to explain himself. The Gibbons brothers' direction is at its most useful when it allows that sort of detail to pass quickly, leaving us to notice it. We would welcome more of that confidence in the writing, and less reliance on knowing how Alan usually gets things wrong. Approach the mockumentary for its short digressions, rather than for a sustained comic treatment of its subject.
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.
