This week in Staff Picks, Matt Schimkowitz hails Steve Coogan’s latest turn as a certain boorish broadcaster and Danette Chavez stumps for a Tubi (by way of AMC) original.
Matt Schimkowitz: Alan Partridge From The Oasthouse (Audible)
Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan’s long-running alter ego, has rarely been so active. Following the prodigal Partridge’s return to the BBC with This Time in 2019, Coogan and co-writers Neil and Rob Gibbons have explored the space, as it were, adapting Alan to different media. The trio sent Alan on the road for a motivational speaking tour, entitled Stratagem, in 2022 and released his third memoir, Big Beacon, the following year. There’s more on the horizon, with a new BBC series, How Are You, arriving imminently. Adding to all this full-bodied Partridge are four seasons of a pocket-sized podcast, From The Oasthouse, which represents the best of modern Alan.
With the release of its fourth season in early July, From The Oasthouse continues Coogan’s broad media satire in what is arguably the media’s most influential format. As podcasts have allowed the world’s free speech warriors to spread their audio cancer away from the prying ears of the mainstream, Partridge has spread his wings on Audible. Unshackled from the irons of the BBC or the North Norfolk Digital radio station, Alan can expound upon whatever flight of fancy flutters across his face. With each 20-minute episode, he comments on a variety of topics, from Twitter trolls and Brexit to that petrol station jingle he nearly remembers and the extensive list of broadcasters and entertainers who are more successful than he is. As with all Partridge, his perspective is painfully and hilariously specific, allowing for some of the sharpest and most incisive comedy of Coogan’s career.
The Oasthouse format is straightforward and malleable. Ostensibly set from his home, which he calls the Oast house, even though he won’t be drying any hops there, Oasthouse is an attempt at recreating idyllic British life from the perspective of a put-upon conservative broadcaster of a certain age. Following its impossible earworm theme, each episode follows Alan from his home or via a mobile recording unit as he goes about his day. Whether he’s adding live commentary to King Charles’ coronation, driving his assistant Lynn Benfield (dutifully played, once again, by Felicity Montagu) to the doctor, or on stakeout in an attempt to catch a neighbor illegally dumping building materials on his cul-de-sac, Coogan finds original avenues into the character’s narcissistic Anglophilia. The mobility of the Partridge podcasting operation gives the show a narrative variety that separates it from the pack. Priding himself on authenticity, Coogan records his audio from whatever location Alan says he’s in, whether that be from the front seat of his Lynn’s Daewoo Tacuma or inside the hedges adjacent to the Alan Partridge Sound Bath Garden. It creates more of an audio drama, akin to a radio show, with crisp, reactive sound effects that allow Coogan and co. to mine as much specificity out of a situation as possible. The result is a podcast that rewards close listening and ASMR sensitivities.
Coogan’s character is a broadcast chameleon, able to take the form of whatever medium he’s placed in. One of Alan’s artistically refined achievements was Mid Morning Matters, the high-concept sponcon-turned-webseries filmed from a webcam fixed to his radio mixing board. The need for him to fill space with words is among the most crucial elements of the Partridge experience. He needs room to banter, whether another person is present or not. On Audible, he doesn’t have to worry about traffic and travel, nor segueing into songs; whatever he wants to talk about, he can wax poetic on for as long as he’d like. (Though his ad-reads are also tremendously funny, allowing him to show off his unrivaled enunciation and mastery of sibilants—Hear: Alan’s ad read for Ship-Shape Fish Shop: “where fish makes a splash.”) Oasthouse follows in the faux-radio show tradition by forcing Alan into a box and making it his own. Unsurprisingly, Coogan and Gibbons have taken an overexposed and overdone format and made something radically new. Aha!
Danette Chavez: Demascus (Tubi)
A graphic designer (Okieriete Onaodowan as the eponymous protagonist) sets aside the 33rd year of his life for “martyrdom,” and things just get stranger and more poignant from there in Demascus, a stylish and prickly new sci-fi series from playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm. The premise is like something out of Black Mirror: Demascus, nursing hurt feelings after overhearing his coworkers mocking him in the break room of their requisite sterile, near-future workplace, embarks on a fancy new form of therapy called D.I.R.T. (Digital Immersive Reality Therapy). When he slips on the sleek headset (take note, Oculus designers), he’s able to visit alternate realities, “but only as a voyeur.” He’s not to interfere or linger in his alternate lives, no matter how dangerous or titillating they may be—doing so “may permanently corrupt [his] primary reality.”
Though only six episodes, season one covers a lot of territory, occasionally with the use of self-driving cars that actually work (and even project a photorealistic image that would make the Driving Crooner weep). As Demascus slips into his alternate selves, the show takes a turn for the anthological, playing in different genres—domestic drama, queer romance, coming-of-age. Chisholm uses his theater background to powerful effect in the more intimate moments, like when a couples’ night goes off the rails or Demascus’ therapist Dr. Bonnetville (Janet Hubert, at once cool and maternal) urges him not to back away from his journey of self-discovery. “Nobody knows me. My one dominant quality is I’m unknowable,” Demascus tells her, half-resigned, half-relieved: “That’s a good quality for a Black man to have, right?”
Will Demascus come to realize he’s actually a voyeur in his primary reality too? That’s just one of the questions posed in season one, along with more sweeping ones about abandonment, desire, rejection, and of course love. The series grows headier as it goes on, but even if Demascus starts to lose sight of who he is (or isn’t), Chisholm and his fellow writers Lauren Glover and Kirk A. Moore maintain a firm grasp on their multiversal storytelling. A great supporting cast, including Hubert, Caleb Eberhardt, and Sasha Hutchings, also helps keep things grounded, but watching Onaodowan is like seeing a bud unfurl. He comes across as stoic, almost stiff, early on, but his movements grow looser and more assured as Demascus confronts the things in his life he once refused to see. The smiles come quicker, but so does the resentment and confusion; the character (and actor) is never more alive than when he accepts this contradiction.
And to think, we might not have this captivating new show were it not for Tubi, the not-so-little-anymore streamer that picked it up after AMC Networks chucked it onto the write-off heap along with Moonhavenseason two and other originals. Now, though, Demascus can join audacious, Black-led series that defy easy description like I’m A Virgo, The Vince Staples Show, as well as the slightly more straightforward genre show The Lazarus Project (Paapa Essiedu should just be in more shows, especially ones that aren’t Harry Potter-related). Tubi doesn’t have the most vaunted slate of originals, but backing more shows like Big Mood and Demascus should help garner some prestige.
