COME TO PAPA (ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA)

The history of British comedy is littered with television sitcoms that failed to make the grade on the big screen.

Episodes of Alf Garnett in 'Till Death Do Us Part', 'Dad's Army', 'Steptoe and Son' and 'Porridge' remain TV comedy classics to this day.

But their movie versions in the late 1960s and 1970s were dull, tortuous affairs, as their writers, directors and actors struggled to make the step up from a half an hour of laughter to a format that demanded a much longer running time and had no studio audience laughing track.

And yet movie producers persisted with 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads', 'Rising Damp', 'George and Mildred' and 'Whoops Apocalypse' all getting the big screen treatment and failing miserably.

In the last 16 years, however, there have been some critical successes and some commercial hits when TV sitcoms have turned into movies.

In 1997 and 2007, Rowan Atkinson tried his hand at two 'Mr Bean' movies that both scored well at the international box office - even if they jarred with the critics.

The League of Gentlemen's typically quirky 'The League of Gentleman's Apocalypse' did not set the box office alight but it pleased their cult following.

In 2009, Armando Iannucci brought the foul mouthed antics of Peter Capaldi's fictional Labour spin doctor Malcolm Tucker from 'The Thick of It' to Washington DC to square off against James Gandolfini's Pentagon Lieutenant General.

He landed an Academy Award nomination for his biting satire 'In the Loop' but it performed modestly at the box office.

Two years ago, E4's cult sitcom about suburban teenagers, 'The Inbetweeners' fared impressively at the British and Irish box office and garnered decent reviews at home.

While it did not make much of a ripple in the US, it did so well at home they are now planning a movie sequel set in Australia.

Steve Coogan has now entered the arena with his most celebrated comic creation, the sports broadcaster turned fading local radio DJ Alan Partridge.

Partridge has been a television fixture ever since he first made the jump from BBC Radio 4's withering send up of rolling news 'On the Hour' to its equally punchy BBC2 equivalent, 'The Day Today' with Chris Morris.

Over the years, Coogan's best known comedy creation has graduated from cliche ridden sportscaster to egomaniacal chat show host in 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' to Radio Norfolk has-been in the BBC series 'I'm Alan Partridge'.

And while Coogan has gone on to carve out a pretty decent career in Hollywood over the past decade, he has stubbornly refused to kill off his most celebrated character.

In 2010, Partridge returned with webisodes of 'Mid Morning Matters' (which saw the DJ switch to a commercial digital radio station) and he then popped up again on Sky Atlantic last year with two specials, 'Welcome to the Places in My Life' and 'Open Books with Martin Bryce'.

At the beginning of Declan Lowney's movie 'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa', we are in familiar territory.

Norwich's most famous sitcom son is still putting the hours in on his North Norfolk Digital mid morning radio phone-in show with Tim Key's Sidekick Simon. 

But from the off, his future is under threat as North Norfolk Digital is taken over by a conglomerate, Gordale Media who want to rebrand the station with the rather bland name, Shape.

As a man, Partridge is always at his worst when his back is to the wall but perversely that is when he is at his best as a comic character. 

Realising he could possibly be axed, he desperately talks the Gordale Media management into sacking Colm Meaney's depressed folk music broadcaster Pat Farrell instead.

After he is heartlessly booted out the studio door, Farrell responds by rampaging through the radio station's relaunch party with a shotgun while Partridge and his long suffering, prim assistant Lynn Benfield (Felicity Montagu) try to get rid of one of his one night stands outside the building.

Mistakenly believing Partridge has always been on his side, Farrell demands, as a siege develops at the radio station, that the DJ acts as a go between between him and the police.

As the 24 hour news channels descend on Norwich, can Alan save his colleagues' lives while suppressing his desperate craving for national TV exposure?

It is a delight to report, after a year of misfiring Hollywood comedies, that 'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa' may well turn out to be the funniest film to hit our cinema screens this year.

Lowney's film works well because it respects the story arcs of its principal character and the traits of his comedy sidekicks from previous TV outings.

Not only does it draw on Partridge's obsession with bizarre trivia, his spinelessness, his vanity, his chauvinism, his rampant but fragile ego and his athlete's foot but Lynn remains hopelessly devoted to her boss despite his tantrums and Sidekick Simon is still trying too hard to impress him on air.

Much of the film's success is down to the fact that many of the actors, producers, writers and even Wexford-born Lowney have previously worked on Alan Partridge TV shows and are so comfortable with the material.

And so there are welcome returns for Simon Greenall's dim Michael the Geordie who works as a security guard at the radio station and Phil Cornwell's once cocky rival DJ Dave Clifton who, like Alan and Pat, is fast becoming a local radio dinosaur and now self-obsessively bores people with tales of his hedonistic youth and his rehabilitation.

There are decent turns too from some new characters such as Monica Dolan as Angela (a potential love interest for Alan), Nigel Lindsay as the tough talking corporate media boss Jason Cresswell, Anna Maxwell Martin as a local Police Commander, Sean Pertwee as a firearms officer and Dubliner, Simon Delaney as a police officer from the north of England.

But the other big plus for Lowney's film is the performance of Delaney's fellow Dub, Colm Meaney.

In many ways, Meaney is the perfect foil for Steve Coogan.

An accomplished television and movie character actor, Meaney brings a mixture of menace, pathos, naïveté and lunacy to the role of Farrell.

You can understand what has driven Pat Farrell to holding his former co-workers hostage but you can also sense their trepidation that he might just go mad with the shotgun.

Meaney is careful never to upstage Coogan but he proves he is very much his equal.

Meanwhile Steve Coogan confirms that he remains the best British comic actor of his generation - possibly the finest since Peter Sellars.

Partridge remains a curiously endearing, yet hideous character.

Playing out like a parody of the classic Sidney Lumet siege film 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa' sees Lowney and his screenwriters, Coogan, Iannucci, Peter Baynham, Neil and Rob Gibbons on top form - switching from wicked satire to slapstick and the odd spot of bawdy humour with consummate ease.

While Lowney takes a no frills approach as a director, it is an assured performance that respects both the genre and the format.

The pace of the film never lets up and you certainly don't get the feeling that the movie would have been more suited to the small screen.

Alan Partridge has always been a curiously British phenomenon. 

Who else could work in a nicely executed visual gag at the expense of former Radio One DJ, Bruno Brookes?

It will be interesting to see, now that Magnolia Pictures has announced it is to release the movie in the US following its UK and Irish success, how it will play on the other side of the Atlantic.

('Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa opened in UK and Irish cinemas on August 7, 2013. This review originally appeared on Eamonnmallie.com)