Nathan Barley comes to TV

The 8-Mile sequence was a bit fun though. Loved that line about "tending the garden", or whatever it was. I was high on honey and lemon and St John's Wort.

My main problem with this programme is that they're all cunts (I'm not sure Chris Morris or Charlie Brooker knows how to write anyone that isn't), which is fine if that's the statement you're making, but I think that in order to sustain a sitcom over a whole series, you need at least some measure of sympathy for at least one of the main characters, and I can't see how you can have any sympathy for any one of those guys. I've given this a two-episode chance now, I don't think I'll bother with the third.

(Barley voice over, reading from Ashcroft's terribly stilted and banal article) They use the word 'cool', it is their favourite word. The idiot doesn't think about what it is saying. Thinking is rubbish. And rubbish isn't cool. Stuff and shit is cool.

Barley aloud, admiringly Oh Ashcroft, Ashcroft!

http://18hz.deid.net/sugarape/res/fountain.jpg

Momus, I'm sure I've seen a few different 'welcome to our newest user...' things on UkNova recently, are you sure it's not just that you have to keep checking back until the membership's dropped below 25,000? They've been kicking off people who never upload recently so it ought to drop fairly often.

the junkie singing songs to little kids?

Things I did like: when Dan called his sis 'fat arms' during their argument - about the only thing that suggested real emotion; the junkie choir guy's song - XL or Rough Trade should sign him now.

Peep Show satirised this scene a lot better, and it wasn't even the main focus of that show. In Peep Show Jeremy and Super Hands' 'band' was more convincingly lame, and, especially, there was Super Hands getting addicted to crack to look cool ("Mmmm, this crack is so moreish".)

(wasn't the prisoner theme part of the mashup in the club? had all sorts of things in there that i remember from my youth. blancmange?)

With respect, Mr Raw, convincing plot and real emotions is not the point of NB. Is it convincing that Dan Ashcroft has had Pete's Dragon out for seven years and owes £2492 and has to play Russian Tramp Racing to earn the money back? Of course it's not. But is it convincing that I went to my local video store on Avenue A on September 12th, 2001, only to be told that, even though they'd closed on 9/11, I still had to pay a fine? Would you believe that if you saw it in Nathan Barley? You probably wouldn't, it would just sound like typical farcical Brooker/Morris atrocity hokum. But it happened. It's 4 Real. Life has also lost the plot, which is why plot is irrelevant. What matters in satire is that we recognise our folly and laugh at ourselves. And, you know, writing for Vice magazine, do I recognise it when the Sugarape editor says to Dan "Stupid people think it's cool, smart people think it's a joke, also cool"? Yes, I do. Verifuckingsimilitude, right there, dude. I also think the hipster vocab is terrific, approaching Burgess and Orwell in its inventiveness:

"Hey you should come, dollsnatch, it's going to be totally fucking Mexico."

"Check this, m'niggas, online tramp racing from Russia, totally de-reg, yeah?"

"I'm going to sleep
Oh yeah, respect for that. Catch some susans.
Yeah, break a Chinaman, yeah?"

Lines like these aren't just funny and inventive, they tie hipsterism in to zones of disorder (Mexico, Russia, China), and that's been a crucial element to every subculture. The atrocity and poverty of these zones of disorder both offsets the privilege of the bourgeois kids who buy into them (by, for instance, gambling on tramp teeth-pulling) by making them seem worldly, and shows them up the moral abyss they live in. I'd put it to you that the verisimilitude of satire works at that kind of level, and not at the level of "Would he really have pulled out the plug just when he won all the money?"

I'll carry on watching though and maybe it'll come clear later on.

yeah, jacques peretti, basically. sleaze nation (latterly the guardian) put this no-mark on an absurd pedestal based on his ability to hate on his peers.

NB works the same way. It may not be big on belly laughs but since when has Chris Morris gone out just to do that? It's usually just a side-effect of all the other stuff he's trying to do. I think a re-assessment of Brass Eye and all Morris output of the last eight years may be worthwhile now. It's him that has been chalked up as a preacher man of sorts himself with the hype and 'media terrorist' persona. In one Guardian interview way back he revealed how the only reason he hardly ever gave interviews is because people just ASSUMED he wouldn't want to (possibly untrue but I liked it).

"You can come, you can come, you can come multiple times" - that's like watching a 13 year old get his kicks.
that's because Nathan is 13 years old - do you see. Also this is exactly the kind of crap you hear some guys saying here and there so as reflection, however overstated, of real situations it's fair enough.

Ashcroft is indeed just as hateable as Barley at the moment. I'm not sure whether this is really intentional on Morris/Brooker's part but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Yeh, but I was a 13 year-old schoolboy when this was at it's height and I'd never met a sloan-ranger. I just didn't get the humour or the references to LaCroix etc at all. I remember finding the whole AbFab experience to be rather painful tbh.

that's because Nathan is 13 years old - do you see. Also this is exactly the kind of crap you hear some guys saying here and there so as reflection, however overstated, of real situations it's fair enough.

I do understand this but I don't really find it funny when some goon in my office says stuff like this so why should I find it funny when it's on telly? It's a really obvious pun (and yes, that's the point) but what's it doing in a sitcom anyway? David Brent could have pulled it off because he's a man who's been put in a position of authority and he's acting like a child and that's funny because of the bemused silence and the way he digs himself further into a ditch. Something about the joke just fell flat. If there was a sitcom about chavs in Newcastle that relied mostly on them throwing kebabs at Pakistanis and generally being obnoxious, I don't think that would be very funny either because you can see this kind of behaviour simply by going out on the street. It's not even an exaggeration.

who says you're meant to find it funny? i think too much of is made of the 'Morris is here primarily to amuse' idea! this stopped being the case long ago for me.

erm, so was i! but i could see it was a well written show that did it's job well. some great turns from bit-players too including June Whitfield and Jane Horrocks obv. it wasn't complicated stuff humour-wise despite the world they inhabited seeming rather alien.

A six part comedy series written by Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris.

Hats off to channel 4 for providing us with more friday filthy tv greatness.

oh well if Channel 4 say it's comedy than it must be...

...i'm also not sure about the "political" NB, the enron and george bush mentions in the rap were a little perplexing

of course NB's 'political' rants were empty, but you can bet your ass apathy would have been just as mercilessly pilloried if that were fashionable (ie as it was in the tvgohome versh -- the tv show has been faithful to the times).

x-post

caitlin right, me wrong about prisoner ringtone.

other things i recognised mixed into that piece at the party:
'einstein a go go'
'i won't let the sun go down on me'
'it's in the trees, it's coming' from that kate bush song (hounds of love?) (although sample is from 'night of the demon' i think)
something by tears for fears
'centrefold' (j geils band?)
totp theme tune (thin lizzy? the one after?)

the 9/11 stuff used for shock seemed horribly dated already.