Nathan Barley comes to TV

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"detail-obsessed dvd-watching fuckwits" is an extension of morris' old jokes in the configurations of the day today and (more apt.) jam dvds. but yeah.

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 10:22 (twenty-one years ago)

I keep thinking that they should have gone the whole hog with this and simply not called it 'Nathan Barley'. Even four episodes in I still keep expecting the 'real' Nathan to show his head. When I go back to the original columns NB seems far more than the bumbling chancer he's become. The problem is he's become that mainstay of TV sitcoms, a likable fool. He may be parasitcal and an indication of a bankrupt system but what he's not is threatening.

Looking back over this thread (and, compared with the kind of debate about this going on elsewhere, it's been a delight) I realise that the connection in my mind between NB and Patrick Bateman had struck a few other people. The original NB is presented as a winner - venal, small-minded, blinkered and often plain evil but ultimately a sucess in his own little milieu. It's the moral sense of horror at this sucess that seems to be missing on the screen.

― winterland, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 10:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Momus if they were really on the ball they'd know that we'd be reading on internet message boards about people pausing pirated torrents.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 10:28 (twenty-one years ago)

winterland is otm -- i think the lesson of this thread has been "learn to love it". the show has its own merits, which are not those of the website. perhaps the website's merits were greater, but the show is still halfway classic.

― NRQ, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 10:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Is it "the" Momus talking on this chat board? The one who did Stars Forever etc?

― Lisa G., Tuesday, 8 March 2005 10:47 (twenty-one years ago)

The original NB is presented as a winner - venal, small-minded, blinkered and often plain evil but ultimately a sucess in his own little milieu. It's the moral sense of horror at this sucess that seems to be missing on the screen.

but he does win on TV as well, see the Japan TV thing last week. the horror is there too - for anything he does or says there is at one person in the same scene looking aghast or bewildered.

― Sven Bastard (blueski), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 10:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Is it "the" Momus talking on this chat board? The one who did Stars Forever etc?

yes

.
.
.

It was amoebas.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 13:21 (twenty-one years ago)

i saw the dan ashcroft fellow in a shoreditch cafe a little while ago. he looked so surly!

― lauren not logged in, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:08 (twenty-one years ago)

I met you once Momus - introduced to you by Pat Kane a few years back. I was working for him at the time - my name's Lisa Groome. Do you remember me?

― Lisa G., Tuesday, 8 March 2005 17:00 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Cunt drew the Bateman parallel at least once, didn't it? Can't remember if it was ever explicit but there's that bit where he imagines himself in a film casually killing a bunch of people to the strains of 'Caught By The Fuzz' (I'm not sure if Brooker erroneously regards Supergrass as some hipster reference point, they've been mentioned in relation to the show as well).

― Michael Philip Philip Philip Philip Annoyman v1.0 (Ferg), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 17:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Hello Lisa!

― Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Hy Momus!
I've just been talking to Pat on the phone, mentioned that I'd bumped into you online, and he told me to make sure that I give "that old rake" a hard time for him (has something to do with an unsettled semiotics score apparently) but I'm sure I don't know how I would go about doing that!

― Lisa G., Tuesday, 8 March 2005 21:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Most of ILX do our best to give him a hard time. (Not so much on here, where he has been on mostly excellent form.)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 21:27 (twenty-one years ago)

pay kane!

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 21:52 (twenty-one years ago)

haha, whoops!!!

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 21:52 (twenty-one years ago)

"chat board"

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 21:57 (twenty-one years ago)

are we the "detail-obsessed DVD-watching fuckwits" or is morris the "unnecessary prop-detail-inserting fuckwit"?

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, I'm still grateful to Pat for having given me a job once on the Glasgow Herald. But it doesn't sound like he's grateful for me being just about the only person who ever leaves comments on his blog, PlayJournal! Or perhaps he's heard that I've been called into The Scotsman and told by the editor "We'd like to get a bit cooler, and we think you're the man to do it for us."

By the way, this thread has now fuelled no less than two blog entries (one for each of my headset cellphones) elsewhere: on Click Opera and on Design Observer. Waste not, want not, as we say in Scotland.

― Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 07:34 (twenty-one years ago)

It's a a shame - I'm not sure either why more people don't comment on Pat's pages. I do read his blog occasionally. It's excellent, but I can only ever think of platitudes in response to his entries. I'm certainly not the heavyweight he is (or indeed you are). Pat's planning a return to music, working with Kaija Saariaho, among others, on a soul-opera. Maybe I'll run into you somtime, especially if you do come to be with us here at The Scotsman ;-)

― Lisa G., Wednesday, 9 March 2005 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm not sure if Brooker erroneously regards Supergrass as some hipster reference point, they've been mentioned in relation to the show as well).

Possibly the real-life 'coolness'/connectedness/Primrose Hillness of the band is what the have in mind.

― NRQ, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 11:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Sorry. I don't even know Pat Kane, and I'd not visited his blog before following your link.

― Lisa G., Wednesday, 9 March 2005 13:46 (twenty-one years ago)

― Ste (Fuzzy), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 13:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, next time you, er, don't speak to him, tell him I'm not at all upset that he calls me "that old rake". In fact, I'm going to have it printed on my business cards. It'll fit a lot better than "furtive, crepuscular art rude-boy".

― Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Viva the Rakeways Institute!

― Lisa G., Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm so confused.

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Is this, like "the" chat board for sucking Momus off?

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 17:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha ha, they're even showing ads for the LCD Soundsystem album in the ad break during Nathan Barley now.

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Friday, 11 March 2005 22:17 (twenty-one years ago)

I counted lcd, daft punk, the bravery, and the futureheads.

― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 11 March 2005 22:33 (twenty-one years ago)

At least they know their target market, I guess.

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Friday, 11 March 2005 22:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Technically a Polanski!

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Saturday, 12 March 2005 06:11 (twenty-one years ago)

the Manic Miner loading screen made me laugh a lot = i am the target audience

― zappi (joni), Saturday, 12 March 2005 08:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Is this, like "the" chat board for sucking Momus off?

Sorry, I'm not accepting any new applicants just now.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 12 March 2005 11:08 (twenty-one years ago)

best ep yet, yeah?

― N_RQ, Saturday, 12 March 2005 12:23 (twenty-one years ago)

it was the first to capture the website's moral etc. also jonatton's gestures are well brown, though hard to render in text.

hahaha and vice got pwned! michael fuckin' jackson.

― N_RQ, Saturday, 12 March 2005 12:26 (twenty-one years ago)

YES MICHAEL FUCKING JACKSON! love it.

― cutty (mcutt), Saturday, 12 March 2005 14:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha ha ha!!! Finally Nathan has turned into the old Nathan from the website that we *love* to hate...

― Masonic Cathedral (kate), Saturday, 12 March 2005 14:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Though I guess Claire's callous and exploitative side has finally come to light. I'm glad that she didn't stay squeaky clean forever. The difference between her reaction to a 13 year old cokehead (oh my god, I want her for my film) and her reaction to an 18 year old cokehead (ugh, how offensive, get her away from me) really showed her core Guardian reader hypocrasy, didn't it?

― Masonic Cathedral (kate), Saturday, 12 March 2005 15:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Just watched it. Phew, a bit close to the old boner. The laughs were big and uncomfortable... as they should be, and as they were in TVGoHome. Best of the series, combining Morris' Brasseye pedo schtick with a very direct hit on Vice magazine, for whom I'm sure I've at some point been asked to jerk off a builder. (Repressed memory syndrome, obviously. I don't even have an uncle.)

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 12 March 2005 15:49 (twenty-one years ago)

i know it's funny that he jerked the builder off, but still, WHYYYYYYYYY do it?

― Sven Bastard (blueski), Saturday, 12 March 2005 21:01 (twenty-one years ago)

It's not just funny, it's the CLIMAX of Dan's dilemma throughout the series. Dan does it because it is the essence of Dan. The implacably cruel logic of the script's moral mission demands it.

Dan's position, stuck in a world he hates, has been untenable from the start. But we have no clue how low he'll go. In the first episode we see him torn between scorn and collusion with "the idiots". He seems like he's going to be the John Wayne character. But soon we see he's no John Wayne. He's not even the Preacherman the idiots take him for. He's weak, fatally flawed by lack of money, lack of knowledge, lack of pride.

Dan's face has been the barometer of his conflicted emotions, and has twitched and sneered and cringed and looked baleful (the most brilliant acting of the series has been the gamut of negative feelings expressed by that face). But as he's jerking off the builder everything is running across that face at double speed and double strength: Dan is pained, embarrassed, humiliated, bewildered. HE IS JERKING OFF A BUILDER FOR MONEY.

The series could be called "Six Episodes In Search of Character". By the look of the trailer for Episode 6, though, it's more of a moral "Battle Royale", an elimination game with Dan and Nathan battling it out to be the "winner" in a world where only the pathetic survive.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 March 2005 00:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I must say I've warmed to this series as it has gone on, and particularly last Friday's, which was the first time I'd felt it was doing everything right and flowed effectively. The Jonathan Yeah character's absurdly galled tone - "I suppose I could do an *in-ter-view*..." - and the wonderful little snatches of Julia Davis and Morris himself in the TV bits just seemed emblematic of a greater confidence.

Did anyone else like that song of Mandy's? "Bad... to have a bad uncle..." Delivered rather like Sarah Nixey on top of a particularly shivery Soft Cell chord sequence.

Morris can always generally be relied upon to use diegetic (and indeed non, c.f. "Blue Jam"/"Jam") music well; just the background songs seem chosen to jarring perfection - "Harvest for the World" and "Alright" in that family pub; "Stool Pigeon" IIRC earlier in the unspecified cafe.

― Tom May (Tom May), Monday, 14 March 2005 00:53 (twenty-one years ago)

yes the song was funny too. i suppose it was also good that the cracks appear in Claire's character, the indignation/hypocrisy juxtaposition etc.

― Sven Bastard (blueski), Monday, 14 March 2005 01:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, about time really. It does seem to me that the show had previously been marking time, with some stray bits of good work scattered amongst the earlier episodes. It now seems like a credible proposition, perhaps because Barley is more genuinely loathsome, and it doesn't give Claire an easy ride.

― Tom May (Tom May), Monday, 14 March 2005 01:15 (twenty-one years ago)

when nathan is getting the blowjob, and the bad uncle song comes back--CLASSIC!

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 14 March 2005 03:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I'LL KILL 'IM

― Ste (Fuzzy), Monday, 14 March 2005 09:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I've had the Bad Uncle song stuck in my head for days now. How soon before the LCD Soundsystem remix is released?

I was actually glad when Claire's cracks showed, because it made her more an actual whole, rounded character, rather than just an empty shell for expressing disgust at Nathan and Dan.

― Masonic Cathedral (kate), Monday, 14 March 2005 09:35 (twenty-one years ago)

i want a second series! it would be good to know more about the minor characters, 2-d as they are. the end of this ep was so well judged, with claire expecting that everyone would turn their backs on barley, and the exact opposite happening. 'that is well "no way!"'.

― NR_Q, Monday, 14 March 2005 09:41 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, it never occurred to me until the other day tht this cd actually get a second series. has morris had a second series before?

― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 14 March 2005 09:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Won't it largely depend on viewing figures?

Any idea what they are?

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Monday, 14 March 2005 10:29 (twenty-one years ago)

i think the viewing figs have been really bad, like 1 million bad. but if put on a weds or thurs night that wdn't be so bad, and it's awards-bait. morris did two series of 'on the hour'. that was a long time ago.

― N_RQ, Monday, 14 March 2005 10:32 (twenty-one years ago)

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