Steve Coogan Could Return To British TV

EXCLUSIVE: Baby Cow, Coogan’s TV production company, tells me it’s re-cutting the series of internet shorts that it made for Australian beer company Fosters as a new TV series. Until now Coogan’s cringingly-embarrassing TV chat show host and disc jockey Alan Partridge character has always aired on the BBC. The new 6-part series could be sold to Channel 4 or digital comedy channel Dave, Baby Cow boss Henry Normal tells me. The 12-part internet series starring Coogan will begin appearing online on November 5. Each 11 minute webisode is shot as if it’s been filmed through a webcam in Partridge’s Radio Norwich studio. Coogan’s currently halfway through filming the webisodes. The original BBC series, which regularly attracted 6 million viewers, ran between 1997 and 2002. Deadline’s Mike Fleming reported yesterday that IFC is wrapping up U.S. distribution on another Baby Cow production, Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip, starring Coogan and fellow comic Rob Brydon as they tour eateries in northern England. Winterbottom turned the results into a 6-part BBC miniseries, which he’s boiled down for the new movie.