From the Oasthouse: A Cosmic Hilarity
Or: How Alan Partridge Became the New Cthulhu
Note: This piece originally ran on a previous website of mine in October of 2020. It is reprinted here because 1) I like it, 2) that website no longer exists, and 3) I needed a break this week. Cheers.
Let me start by saying I’m not writing this for anyone who doesn’t already know who Alan Partridge is. Condensing 30 years of character history into a comprehensive introduction and trying to convey just what Partridge means to the broader landscape and evolution of comedy is not a task I’m up to, save to say that he endures and that is a Good Thing.
I started writing this review almost a month ago, hoping to provide a more punctual reaction to his new Audible-exclusive podcast “From the Oasthouse,” an ostensible project by which Partridge could finally supply his “adoring fans” with the kind of raw, unedited glimpse into his personal life that “they’ve always dreamed of.” I then stopped and let this draft stew for a few weeks. I wanted to test my own memory and see how much of it I could actually recall after listening to all 6 and a half hours of it.
Because here’s the thing, From the Oasthouse is, I have to emphasize, astonishingly boring. I don’t mean that as an insult or a criticism; I mean boredom is an intentional, intrinsic quality of the work, and it repeatedly takes the listener aback throughout the show’s runtime. As I listened, I was constantly tuning out Coogan’s oaky drone and losing track of the subject. Why am I listening to this if I can’t focus on it? I’m not really laughing, either. Is this even funny?
This happens from time to time in comedy. Something comes along and attempts to be funny by going against the stated goal of making people laugh. When the gambit works, people like Neil Hamburger and Tim Heidecker can alchemize it into entire careers. When it doesn’t, you end up with Netflix paying performers through the nose to scold audiences into clapter. Which, I suppose is also a type of career, but it’s definitely not funny.
From the Oasthouse is something different entirely. Yes, there are jokes, each minute is rich with them, and it’s never difficult to tell where the humorous inflection points are. It’s possible to listen and intellectually discern when and why you’re supposed to laugh. But it doesn’t work that way in practice. All the humor is there to buttress an underlying theme: that Alan Partridge is a vain, petty, and unbelievably dull, uninteresting person. Sure, we all know this, but we’ve never witnessed the true depths of his vacuity. Every single line read, every second, every momentary intrusion by another person into Alan’s aural plane, hammers this theme home with such consistent, suffocating force that it’s impossible not to succumb to it.
This creates an entirely new comedy dynamic I’ve never encountered before. Listening to From the Oasthouse is not funny. But thinking about From the Oasthouse, contemplating its nature and the amount of craft and work that went into it, is exceptionally funny.
The only thing I can compare it to is H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Lovecraft is often criticized, ahem, alongside other peccadillos, for being vague with his descriptions of the cosmic terror his characters face, and for the specificity he does provide being insufficiently terrifying. But Lovecraft’s work endures because his ideas are brilliant. Reading about Cthulhu is not scary. Thinking about how you would react if you actually encountered Cthulhu in the flesh is extremely scary.
This is the effect that makes From the Oasthouse special, and another win in Coogan’s long history of taking Partridge into new mediums and adapting the character to his success. He’s aware that Partridge works in TV, radio, and film because he has other characters who can ground the audience and be the foil he needs for his buffoonery. Coogan could have gone that route with the podcast, and there is the occasional passing character who serves a similar function, but he also knows that if Partridge was real, his ego would be dying for a chance to create a show that is about him and only him. It’s a gambit that pays off spectacularly well.
In the weeks that have passed since I finished listening, bits and pieces of the show have not only stuck with me, but have crept back to me unexpectedly, like mental burps carrying the taste of a hearty meal. I didn’t laugh during Partridge’s ten minute aside on the lost art of letter writing, complete with an admonition for people who don’t seal their envelopes properly. Nor did I laugh during a scene where he visits his assistant’s house to retrieve some items she needs for a stay in hospital and ends up bragging to her neighbor that he has VIP tickets to a local boat show. NOR did I laugh while he held forth, as if his listeners needed this advice for the benefit of their futures, on what it’s like to host a charity gala in a kilt. But, steadily for the last several weeks, I’ve found myself recalling these moments and cracking up because it is all so overwhelmingly, mind-bogglingly inane.
As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” Oasthouse makes logicians of all who listen to it, replacing the heavens with their exact opposite number in quixotic appeal: Alan Partridge. Thinking about From the Oasthouse while bearing the knowledge of what it is, a fastidiously detailed character study of the most inconsequential, undeservedly self-regarding character in the history of theatrical Fools, told from his point of view, is to try and repeatedly fail to grasp just how much effort and intellectual horsepower was dedicated to something so trivial and stupid. Who knows how long it took Coogan to write this, but there’s 6 and a half hours of dense, breakneck bloviating that never, ever deviates from its ambition to make listeners understand just how shamelessly their time is being wasted by this nitwit.
It’s just all so complete and self-sufficient. Everything that Alan says through Coogan’s gravelly basso profundo, every non-sequitur, every pointed opinion on a subject no one would bother forming an opinion on, every snide aside about the type of men who drive cars below a certain fuel efficiency threshold, sorry, petrol efficiency threshold, we must stand-up to the continued Americanization of modern English, every under-breath utterance of “must do stand-up” when Partridge makes a comment that he thinks is funny but most definitely is not… It’s all so comprehensive and, for lack of a more accurate term, cosmic. It is Cosmic Hilarity. I can’t wait to see where Coogan goes from here, because even after 30 years it really feels like he’s only revealed the edge of Partridge’s vapid, breathtakingly dumb universe.
May our Lord illuminate the righteous path He has laid before each of us and compel us to walk it dutifully and with joy.