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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Nathan Barley

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All Acting Regiment

15:14 / 06.02.05

This on next friday on the UK's Channel 4.

Chris Morris: controversial. He's made Brasseye and Jam. BE was a stirical news show, v. funny in my opinion. Jam was a disturbing, vaguely Lynch but not really sitcom which was also good IMHO. I take it most of you already know about these, but thought you could do with an intro anyway.

This new show is a sitcom about the trendy Hoxton media set. That is to say, the "cool" people, the hip crowd of today, ands all their bullshit.

There's a magazine called Sugar Ape (or Suga RAPE) as one employ puts it on an advert.

Think it'll be good? And once it's actually been on, ye can discuss it here.

15:31 / 06.02.05

Aaah! Next Friday?!?

I'm gonna have to fire up BitTorrent...

15:35 / 06.02.05

To be fair: it's Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker together. Brooker created the character over five years ago, and he regularly starred in a fictional TV listing. The show was not called "Nathan Barley" then, but just "Cunt".

It was a bit more vitriolic. Morris might have toned it down.

You can catch up on old listings here.

Haus of Mystery

15:58 / 06.02.05

Slightly concerned that this may be a bit out of date, but the trailer looks reliably demented. And I worship at Brooker's feet.

16:45 / 06.02.05

Legba turns up to the party two hours late.

We started to discuss this here but, I'm not against a new thread to discuss the show specifically.

Rilly, looking forward to this, Brooker is the king of acerbic wordplay and the guy playing Barley sounds enough like a "Cunting Londoner" to make it self-consciously funny. Running through the background is very Spaced-like feel, though that might be down to the "surreal (non-)professional 20something" vibe it's working off of.

"Alright, here's the credoss [sic]"
"It's "Trash" as in the trash all around us...
... and "Bat"" *nods*

Love. It.

17:13 / 06.02.05

IS there a trailer online anywhere? I don't live in England any more and have to rely on the internet for this stuff.

17:38 / 06.02.05

They're on the website here, Cameron.

Personally, I'm hugely pessimistic about this, but I'm loath to spoil the mood.

17:56 / 06.02.05

Hmm...I can't tell if this will be funny or not yet. I love Brooker's original listings in TVGoHome, and I love Chris Morris...but yeah, I share a little bit of the pessimism.

There's a review on cookdandbombd.com that tears it to pieces, but they seem to be a Chris Morris fan site that doesn't actually enjoy anything that Chris Morris ever does (save for the halcyon days of his decade-old radio show), so I can't take their opinion seriously.

04:38 / 07.02.05

I'll be watching Nathan Barley, definitely, but then I dare say I'll be buying the new Oasis album quite early on. Hopefully the former will be less of a mistake.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:05 / 07.02.05

The Big Issue didn't seem too taken with it, though a lot of that seems to be that it's dated- which I guess it probably WILL be, being based on a turn of the millennium demographic thingy...they do, however, say "Nathan's catchphrases are spot on and occasionally very funny".

Personally, I'm hoping for Morrisian linguistic manglings rather than contemporary satire... so I'm still looking forward to it!

15:21 / 07.02.05

From Cook'd and Bomb'd:

In closing: If you find the idea of a perverted rock/scissors/paper game called cock/muff/bumhole hilarious you may find something in this show to like, if not love.

Now, is it just me, or are they missing the point here?

18:39 / 07.02.05

Very possibly.

Cook'd and Bomb'd is a bit strange anyway. It's basically what would happen if all anyone on Barbelith ever did was say terrible things about George M, Peter Milligan, and possibly Alan Moore. And 'neil' who wrote that review, seems a bit, well, conflicted - the ( hilarious, and well worth going through if you've got the time, ) Geefe articles which Chris Morris wrote for The Observer a few years ago are, on Cook'd and Bomb'd, attributed to neil, he is listed as their author. Which would appear to mean that either neil has serious 'boundary issues,' or that, on the other hand, he is, in fact...

Running a board for years that's ostensibly a fansite, but is in fact a festering pit of bile would be a very Chris Morris thing to do, but as with the VW ads discussed here recently, he can't do everything, surely.

There seems to be a queue to give Nathan Barley a kicking, to say, as a telly reviewer, that you didn't like it first - I'm not totally sure if I haven't got a downer on this already, and it's not even on yet, and won't be for days.

00:16 / 08.02.05

The Newsnight Review people gave it a thumbs up. Tom Paulin wasn't one of the panel, obviously. I'm not sure it'd be Joycian enough for him.

14:21 / 10.02.05

I’m glad I’m not the only one with some reservations about CookdnBombd, as it’s seemed increasingly to me that their approach to comedy is (and this strikes me as a bit of a paradox) quite negative. On the basis of a few of them who’ve actually seen the Barley preview tapes, there are threads where people say whether they’re feeling positive or negative about it, and then other people argue with them about the way they’re feeling and appear keen to change their opinions.

And it all feels rather pointless to me, and it seems like a lot of wasted mindpower when you could be doing something more positive with your time. I don’t necessarily mean writing comedy or whatever, just, I dunno, talking with friends or having a cup of tea. Instead of tying yourself in knots arguing about something you haven’t seen yet, and second-guessing your reaction, and worrying that you’re worrying about it, and so on.

14:39 / 10.02.05

I just hate comments like "If you thought the Brass Eye Special was the most embarrassing thing Morris has ever done, wait til you see Nathan Barley." This is supposed to be a FAN SITE?

Not that they should unquestioningly praise everything he does as genius, but every time I go over there it seems that they detest everything he's done since the Day Today. At which point you'd think, well, stop watching it then...

It's still my number one site for keeping track of what Morris is up to, though...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:18 / 10.02.05

The last time I looked at Glebe's Thrift Funnel they'd changed everything to pretend that Morris was crap, whether that was a response to C&B.

09:21 / 11.02.05

Cameron, I think the point many of them are missing is hidden in that phrase: “… wait until you see Nathan Barley”. But it’s more fun to speculate, it seems.

But you’re right, it’s the best place to keep track of Morris activity. Chortle.co.uk is quite a useful resource for comedy news generally, but I think it derives most of its info from the papers, so it feels a bit more mainstream to me.
And I too have no idea what happened to Glebe’s Thrift Funnel, it’s all very odd.

Bit lost, in all honesty, on the apparent dislike for the BES that pervades. I thought it was very patchy in places, but it was probably the most visible expression of ‘stop this stupidity’ in relation to the whole paedo-scaremongering, and even if it arguably wasn’t up to Morris’s usual standards, it was much needed in my opinion. And of course the fuss was illustrative of its point – make a programme criticising the media and political reaction to a serious issue and how they’ve missed the point, and they accuse you of trivialising the issue. I mean, talk about walking into a trap…

15:24 / 11.02.05

I think it derives most of its info from the papers,
How amusingly circular. Where do you think we get our information?

17:48 / 11.02.05

I like the BES too, Dave.

20:32 / 11.02.05

Huh.

21:09 / 11.02.05

Well, it's turned out to be a continuity sitcom, so it's difficult to judge it on a first episode.

I thought it was pretty good, though. Not excellent, but better than anything else that's on at the moment. Immediate reaction: it's The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, only with the main character's mid-life crisis replaced with 20-something apathy.

If the Ashcroft character starts building up a head of steam and eventually becomes possessed by the righteous, raving voice that penned the TV Go Home columns - and the trailer for next week's ep suggests that's what's going to be happening - it'll be great. Otherwise, it'll stay pretty good.

Oh, and yes, the C&B reviewer did totally miss the point.

21:39 / 11.02.05

Do you work in the lower echelons of the london media industry?, do you have a recieved opinion of the london media industry via moderately liberal and alledgedly intelligent papers like the guardian?, do you dislike your job, yet continue working there whilst harbouring the thoughts that you are better than the people you work with?, do you think you could do better if you really, really, wanted to?, do you think it's hilarious that phil collins doesn't know what the names of popular drugs are?
you'll fucking love it.

06:59 / 12.02.05

I take it that you didn't, then, Jimmy?

Well, I agree with Spatula - good, not great, but there's 5 to go. Certainly not deserving of the drubbing it got from CaB.

I actually know SO many of the Idiots, it's really not funny. I feel like rounding them all up and showing them this. But it probably wouldn't do much.

09:16 / 12.02.05

I felt that the idiots part was the weakest - not bad, just a little over played in parts. But there were some great moments - Pingu is fantastically well played, his painful, muted 'no' when Nathan says 'he'll get me back some day, won't you?' was supurb. It's effectively the pilot, so should start building steam now, but worked well. Sidenote, one of the actors that plays one of the Sugarape Idiots, I've worked with him - and he is one of the biggest cocks I have ever met.

09:32 / 12.02.05

Oooh, which one??

12:23 / 12.02.05

"They're idiots... I... they, they ride around on tiny plastic tractors. Please, I don't want to go... back".

It was alright, but didn't meet the expectations I had for it. Actually, I feel like a bit of a gonk from putting up all that gushing at the top of the thread now. Willing to give it another chance though!

miss wonderstarr

13:30 / 12.02.05

This show grew on me, perhaps as I began to engage with its tone and understand its approach. I really liked the perspective of the bearded, hairy guy, whose name I can't remember... useful and appealing to have a "normal" touchstone to connect with, rather than this simply being an immersion in a world of wankers, and I felt his pain, resignation and humilation were really well communicated.

The job interview scene, for me, was actually Office standard: increasingly, gradually more horrible as the balance shifted from enthusiasm through embarrassment to nightmare, the camera relentlessly giving us every nervous smile, every worried exchange of glances, every lame trailed-off sentence.

The soul-draining irony of tosser-culture deliberately failing to understand that they were being attacked and satirised (in the "Idiots" article) and successfully manipulating critique so it was absorbed within hours back into their dominant cockdom... so there is no real way you can hit at this culture because it takes any attack and immediately transforms it, deftly constructing the Idiots as some other group and continuing to celebrate their own wanky identity.

In fact, the Idiots were all-too recognisable to me -- I know people like this -- and it was uncomfortably close to documentary in some ways. I don't think it's dated; obviously it's exaggerated, but not that much. I wonder if being a London media type (which in a way I am) affects your connection with the show. I don't know how well people in the Highlands, for instance, could "get" it: they might just think it was some clownish, unbelievable or barely-comprehensible London thing, whereas actually I found a great deal of truth in it.

13:44 / 12.02.05

Got to be honest, I think Brooker's fucking with everyone. On the surface of it, Ashcroft's supposed to be yr touchstone to the show, the character you identify with, but he's a completely useless tosser. An idiot, if not an Idiot. Barley's an imbecile, but at least he's a motivated imbecile, whereas Ashcroft is just... useless. He's good at making pointless observations about other people, but has no useful knowledge.

Presuming that Ashcroft is just Brooker in disguise, there's some nice self-loathing going on. Which is why I think Jimmy's criticism could prove to be entirely rubbish - it's *supposed* to reel in people who think they're better than the idiots. It's one huge, vicious attack on every type of superiority complex going.

Maybe. I hope so, anyway. It's that suspicion that's got me really interested in seeing how it progresses.

15:44 / 12.02.05

So, has anyone else been to trashbat.co.ck yet?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:44 / 12.02.05

I've got about ten minutes in, to the cafe scene, and I've turned it off. Two reasons, I find this kind of show, with a central character who's an arse but doesn't realise he's an arse, who says "whats up my nigger?" to an Asian shopkeeper with no trace of shame whatsoever, not amusing but deeply deeply sad and, if they're lucky, extremely fucking annoying. I may try and watch the rest of the episode later on, in the hopes of finding something amusing. Who knows, after the cafe scene it may turn into comedy Tolstoy.

But frankly, if I didn't know who Morris or Brooker were, and I flicked over, would anything keep me past that first 30 second period? Not that I've seen so far.

17:01 / 12.02.05

Yes, sleaze, we have.

First character impressions:

Barley = cocky solipsistic cuntrag

Ashcroft = Useless, arrogant intellectual elitist

Claire = She's a red herring, as she seemed fairly intelligent and emotive during that interview with New Nazi Cock magazise (or whatever it was), but wasn't turned off by Barley at all. "You're going... to fuck... an idiot". I've a feeling she's hooked up with twats before.

Pingu = Loser. Destined to try and strike out on his own and fail at that too.

Sasha = Is... top. She's the real protagonist of this I rek'kon.

What up, my niggers?

17:11 / 12.02.05

Camron, I can't remember his name, it wasn't in the cast list on imdb either. He has a dutch sounding surname and was the white office member with longish wavey hair who was talking about the scissor paper stone game.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

17:23 / 12.02.05

I also thought the strongest part of this was in fact how lame Ashcroft really was. All superior and righteous but can't actually do anything for himself.

Actually I thought the strongest part was the signed picture of Paul Weller hanging on the wall in the weekend on Sunday office, whilst the editor caressed a guitar.

Nathan himself reminds me of people I've known. So rather than just cringing it's more familiar and observational. In a way that's not particularly far off the truth. It would be worrying if it wasn't deeply sad...

I hope it goes down the route I think it's going, because that seems like it would be pretty promising. Other than that, everything's set up now... I just wish more of these shows felt tighter (although I realise the way it's done fits in with the nature of the show. I just want another Spaced, ok?).

17:24 / 12.02.05

I only watched the first half, distractedly, but I was at someone else's house and it seemed a bit rude.

Embarrassed about the Wasp tagline there: 'It's well weapon.' Given that I've picked up the word weapon as the ultimate in compliments.

Those billboards for the speechtool were bewildering until last night.

17:29 / 12.02.05

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