Nathan Barley comes to TV

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

She's off the mark in comparing NB to The Office as "an excercise in pointless cruelty". The Office wasn't pointless cruelty, it was perfectly emotionally pitched, you found yourself really caring about these atrocious or pathetic characters - Brent finally getting the sack dressed as an emu etc.

Ditto Spaced, possibly a better reference point here - I watched the opening, scene-setting epsiode of that yesterday and it was a great example of how to move all the main characters into position and yet do it properly. You had a handle on the characters from day one - I'm none the wiser about some of the people in NB - especially the women who have next to no personality. Likewise the episode where Daisy has the interview at Flaps magazine, and they go to Vulva's performance art thing = better satire than anything in the first episode of NB. Modifying the Nipper's OTM comment upthread, its also a bit like an episode of Spaced where everyone is Twist (the worst character in that series by some way).

Dada - no, you're not supposed care about anyone or anything in the Day Today or Brasseye, and both programmes are far the better for that, because they are not character-led sitcom. NB defineably is, satirical or otherwise, and I'm not convinced Morris is any good at it.

I've got a bit of a bone to pick with the 'Dan as viewer identification character' thing as well. Perhaps, in that NB is 'Losing My Edge' satire, its designed to appeal to the very people its satirising. All the Idiots think Dan's 'Idiots' piece is wonderful, oblivious to the fact its them he's attacking. But the fact is that the Idiots piece is rubbish, its lame student comment section quality at best - Dan is a pretty talentless hack as clearly shown by the interview scene (best bit of the episode I thought). He has nothing to offer the world other than his opposition to it, this mix of bitterness and ill-deserved conceit. He's not much better than the people he's surrounded by - playing Cock Muff Bumhole after a couple of drinks etc.

Did I say anything about this? I'm all sixes and sevens today.

Spot on. As much as the Nathan Barleys are stereotype of the whole meeja scene, so are the Dan Ashcrofts - so WAY above it all... and equally as tragic.

Another thing just occurred to me. There are black characters in this, but no gay characters. How would the satire be different if, say, Nathan Barley were gay?

yeh but unlike Warhol there is nothing at all clever about these Idiots (stating the obvious here?)

the two things continue to be bugbears - attention is drawn to the ethnicity thing only because of Nathan's use of 'my nigga' on anyone (regardless of their ethnicity), otherwise it would be completely irrelevant i think. i expect there will be some sort of 'faux pas' re homosexuality/phobia to come that will draw the second thing to attention also (as with The Office et al).

I suspect that even two nothing sacred 'comedy terrorists' like Brooker and Morris will not go there. It's a lot more acceptable to 'bash' hipsters in a sitcom than it is to bash obviously gay characters. Hipsters have been designated 'okay to hate' in our culture.

The shot near the beginning of episode one, where Dan looks up the street and sees a guy with flip flops on his ears. Dan looks with withering scorn. Now, what if Flip Flop Guy were mincing, or butch or some other gay signifier (a 'big ole bear')? Dan's withering scorn would be... well, simple homophobia, wouldn't it?

these comments on 'NB' are considerably more interesting and entertaining than the show itself.

re peretti -- i said that!