Nathan Barley comes to TV

(x-post because I haven't got a television, Stevem)

OTM. Homer was always lovably stupid, but there was a point when the writers decided to make him a jerk. It seems they were trying to catch up with South Park by injecting some cruelty, but Homer isn't Cartman. The heart has gone from these episodes and the jokes aren't all that great either.

out of the recent C4 run two or three (out of what, ten?) have been pretty funny (eg i quite liked run lisa run) (tho actually i wz on the phone for half of it), but this just sets you up for sadness :(

what i disliked abt ned's themepark to maude wz that misplaced "heart" rather than the absence of it

Dan Ashcroft is obviously the raging voice in Cunt, hopefully we'll see him blow up properly at some point. Pingu could be a good character as well but they just need to slow it the fuck down.

disagree somewhat and would cite Dan's slow agonising 'death' at the meeting with the Weekend On Sunday - and we know Nathan is all about the non-stop babble so the comparisons to The Office can't stretch too far because it's a totally different situation

haven't seen enough of morris's MEAN SPIRITED side yet, though.

Just like those 1980s yoof shows that flashed tons of text on the screen for a second, encouraging otaku viewers to freeze frame the (analogue) video afterwards and read it all, "Nathan Barley" has a wealth of satirical graphic design just begging to be (digitally) pause buttoned: magazine articles, posters, T shirt slogans... It also has an audience (well, if they're like me, anyway) which cares enough about such things to freeze a frame to read the 'Anorexic Bitch' T shirt or check whether Pingu is wearing Bathing Ape.

Personally, I thought the first ep of 'Nathan Barley' was pretty good. Wasn't quite as vitriolic as I was expecting, but I guess the 'Cunt' listings from TVGoHome wouldn't really translate to broadcast telly that well.

That one-second shot of the guy wearing the miniscule hat was the biggest laugh I've had from TV from quite a few years.

Well sort of, the key theme of all this would seem to be the conflict between stupidly high expectations and less impreesive reality. If I didn't know Morris and Brooker were behind it I'm not sure how I would feel about it, as I sid the more I think about it the worse it seems.

The Nathan Barley piece in yesterday's Guardian Guide featured lots of characters that weren't in episode one, which doesn't bode well for it from this aspect.

I think Armando Ianucci's stuff is similar on the not-lol-funny thing, his stuff's just compelling as a sort of mixture of absurd/chuckle-funny/oddly poignant.

the show reminded me of the Sleazenation offices so badly i thought i was living through a flashback.

why? the Broadcast was being, er, broadcast by Pingu, the only sympathetic character in the whole thing.

are Banksy and the rathergood videos people going to be happy being lumped in with this lot? do you think they agreed to it or is it just another case of NB stealing / doing bad versions of things that are (were) innovative?

(teardrop explodes' sleeping gas in there right at the very end too.)

that one of morris's touchstone themes seems to be "fuck the world for it is infested w.ppl self-convinced they're at the cutting-edge-of-where-it's-at but not (=A), at the expense of the ppl who ARE at the cutting-edge-of-where-it's-at (=B)" - but actually the overlooked victims are all the ppl nowhere near the CEoWIA (i mean, whether or not you grant this mythical beast walks the earth anyway, or is worth seekin out) (=C)

ie it (unintentionally) fosters a dubious gradient B » A » C

otm, but isn't the gradient is more c>b>a??

and class is seemingly absent from this series. everyone has a normal south eastern accent, not really posh, not really not; just that some of them mysteriously have more money than others. so straight away the great big thumps morris throws in the direction of barley are great big thumps at nothing very substantial.

the bikes were good though

Then I thought about Ashcroft. He's also bored with his life - surrounded by fevered egos, yet a fevered ego himself. The only difference is that he's aware of it, which makes it more tragic. The boredom of his own existence saps his energy, making it impossible for him to leave, yet loathing himself since he has to stay. He lurches from vitriolic attacks at everyone around him, to BECOMING like those around him.

And then I thought about NB. He's bored, so he tries to make everyone's life more interesting, including his own. He's in a state of blissful ignorance, and sees himself as above the grey soup he looks down upon, not realising that it's just greyness that he spits out himself.

Momus makes a point about there being so much going on in the frames - the clever little design points, the split-second in-jokes. Now imagine if your whole life was like that - everything you saw, heard or did was loaded and marked for your attention. In the same way that if everything is marked in Bold, nothing is highlighted, if everything is interesting, nothing interests you. Which can only lead to boredom. Maybe that's at the heart of it all.

Or maybe they are just caricatures of 5yr old stereotypes, monkey-dancing for our amusement in a tirade of cheap shots and barely funny metaphors, looking up from a mud splattered face as the dotcom-bashing zeitgeist zooms into the past. I guess time will tell.

i didn't want this to be dark and scary, agreed, that is quickly becoming very undergraduate. i thought it might be more of a chance for some good satirical class war, though, which it wasn't. i have a feeling the character of barley will become increasingly objectionable as the series goes on, though.

I didn't think he came across as likeable at all on the TV.

People have talked on this thread about his "banging his head against the glass ceiling" or brought up class issues or whatever. And I'm sure that Ashcroft went away from his Weekend on Sunday "death" with the same ideas that ILXors have about what caused his downfall - when really, it was nothing to do with the Class Ceiling or whathaveyou at all - it was his own bloody hubris! Going in to an interview woefully unprepared, as if all he has to do to get a job is Make The Decision To Sell Out - and his reputation from his column/blog/fanzine and the Powers That Be will just Be Recognised as genius.

Rather than that he was asked to Pitch, and he just *couldn't*. Even a media dummy like me knows that going to a paper or magazine interview without a Pitch is like going to an office job interview and refusing to take a test in Excel. What did he expect?

So without anyone to actually empathise with in the experience, it just becomes like The Office - an exercise in pointless cruelty which just isn't particularly funny or enjoyable to me.

I don't see the class thing at all, with regard to Dan Ashcroft - why are people assuming is he a more working class character, just because he has a Northern accent?!?!??!

this was the disappointing thing about her, that she seemed to fall for NB's self promotion and sub-dirty sanchez japes.

> it just becomes like The Office - an exercise in pointless cruelty

i saw it as someone who was so cocksure of himself getting hoist by his own petard. comeuppance rather than cruelty. the whole series seems to be full of people full of themselves and oblivious to how people outside their small social groups see them.

the pinball machine / office chaos thing hit a nerve - every hour or so someone here will start throwing foam footballs around. nothing more disturbing than things flying through your peripheral vision when you're trying to concentrate.

xpost