It was a little jarring to see Steve Coogan sitting there at the Oscars.

Not that he didn’t deserve that best screenplay nomination for Philomena, but the versatile British actor will always be Alan Partridge to some of us. As director Declan Lowney tells the Straight during a call from Los Angeles, “We’re all very close to Partridge in England. We’ve grown up with Partridge. He’s been a part of our lives for over 20 years.”

Now about to enjoy the kind of transnational attention that the fictional Partridge would never come close to achieving in his own dreary and ever-crumbling world, Steve Coogan’s greatest creation—a pathologically self-absorbed media personality with a fetish for 'sports casual' wear—comes to North America in his very own feature film. Hitting Vancouver theatres on Friday (March 8), Alan Partridge was a critical and box office smash in the UK. But will it fly over here?

“I know people who’ve seen the film for the first time and know nothing about Partridge, American viewers, and they just buy into the notion of a guy who’s a very egotistical, vain, fading radio star who‘ll do anything to resurrect his career,” reasons Lowney, who helmed the fast-moving comedy. “So I think you can buy into that basic thing.”

True enough. Lowney further points out that plenty of the film’s gags—including his personal favourite, involving a panicked Partridge seizing a vehicle and demanding a ride to the police station—are getting big laughs “even in Rotterdam.” But the true beauty of Alan Partridge is Coogan’s uncanny grasp of the character itself.

The kind of smarmy, trivial-minded, sweater-wearing media boob that has dominated pop cultural life in Britain for decades, Alan Partridge is every terrible BBC Radio One daytime DJ rolled into one. He’s the ultimate useful idiot for the evil Archons of light entertainment. Except in Coogan’s brilliant hands, Partridge isn’t even useful. And that’s his tragedy.

When we catch up with him in the movie, Partridge has bottomed out at a regional radio station called North Norwich Digital—the latest indignity in a career that’s been in decline ever since he accidentally shot and killed a guest on his mid-‘90s TV chat show, Knowing Me, Knowing You. But he soldiers on, an indefatigable font of mediocrity, filling his program, Mid Morning Matters, with ridiculous jingles, shit ‘80s music, and cosmically pointless call-in questions like, “What would you do in a world without smell?”

Things are shaken up when, in the midst of a corporate takeover, recently sacked late-shift host Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) takes everyone at the station hostage. Partridge, naturally, is stuffed into a Kevlar vest and sent in by the cops to negotiate with his disgruntled ex-colleague—a situation that he just as naturally uses to revive his own dwindling celebrity.

“There were a lot suggestions of things that Partridge could do when we were doing this movie— ‘Oh, he could take off to Hollywood’—but Steve really fought against doing anything to Partridge that was outside his normal experience, and I think he’s right,” says Lowney. “The reason this has worked so well and has kept the fans loyal is because it’s something that happens in Alan’s every day. It happens in the radio station, we don’t get to leave Norwich, barely—we get to the seaside—but it’s all small, parochial, small town English shit that happens. It’s Dog Day Afternoon in a Norwich radio station.”

As Edgar Wright has discovered with his Cornetto Trilogy, we’re happy to giggle over “small town English shit” on this side of the Atlantic. In the case of Alan Partridge, the greater advantage goes to an institution Coogan has spent two decades perfecting. Lowney talks of the actor flashing in and out of character on set. “It’s Steve, then it’s Alan, then it’s Steve; you can tell by the eyes, by the way he’s looking at you or not,” he says, with a chuckle. “I have to say, hand on heart, I think he’s a comedy genius."