Nathan Barley comes to TV

Any idea what they are?

the resolution was all wrong - 6 characters at 6 pixels a piece > 32 columns the spectrum had.

And Dan Ashcroft - when will he get hold of a gun? I liked how he used his initiative and wore TWO gloves (and was still somewhat foiled even in that). He's like the further demoralised incarnation of Julian Barratt's char on The Mighty Boosh.

i think ashcroft WILL get a gun next episode... and possibly shoot nathan?

Down to 700,000 for the third episode, the second worst Friday night viewing figures Channel 4 has had in a decade. It's not even making the top 30 most viewed on C4.

someone on tv listing / review pages was also postulating about a second series and what it would contain - librarian chic was the only thing i remember.

target audience all out djing?

Still, they're down the pub before that, they're hardly hanging around watching TV.

ahhhhh, you may be right!

Nathan Barley's not really Friday night telly, is it?

What's the worst? I actually feel a bit guilty about this, since I suspect a pretty large proportion of us are going out on fridays then downloading NBs on saturday mornings...

I *was* wondering how Nick was going to react to this episode.

I think it captures the rivalries and one-ups that you get in the creative side of the media pretty well perfectly. There is a Barley in every office and he's always busking others' ideas, he KNOWS he's a wanker and his method of ascendancy is to play off everyone who finds him repellent against each other because that will leave him enough leeway to get the ear of the big boss, who the Ashcrofts in any given situation also have identified as a wanker in extremis.

haha, i did this for the first time last Saturday only to find that my housemate had taped it anyway, so we watched the VCR....then danced to '99 Luftballoons', wore shoulder pads, drank Tab Clear etc.

Sending up an alleged global fashion icon/"all-round cool person", with a recently discovered model stepdaughter to boot (as well as someone who mildly irritates me - see also Andre, who I hate more), in a show about the idiocy of posers and trendies makes sense to me. Like, they could replace her "Harajookoo Gurls" fixation with Sugar Ape staff. Or have Momus walk in(I kid, I kid).

Dan reminds me the most of Clerks' Dante Hicks, only even more wet. And instead of Randal Graves, he's got Nathan. And a builder instead of an ex who fucks a dead guy. And no one screaming "Snootchie nootchie bootchies!" in his general area.

Charlie Brooker interviewed Nick once for some BBC internet/computers thing that used to be on Radio 1 around the time of Stars Forever (I was told this when I interviewed CB for TvGoHome book and had moved from 'interview' to 'drink') and pronounced him both nice and interesting. I think Nathan Barley's twattishness comes from a combination of illiteracy, opportunism and Englishness.

BTW there is a 'thinkpiece' about Peter Doherty in the latest issue of Edgy Style Mag which is waaaaay too referential/reverential (did everyone catch the documentary last week?)

::rolls around on the floor in a delight of outrage::

Ste, doesn't the Hoxditch mentality still make room for countrywide/global 'icons'? I think 15Peter20 would agree.

In 1999? The same year he invented Nathan Barley, yeah?

I needed -- needed a friend
To help -- help me to mend
But I found friends could be bad
With this experience I had

"straight on straight gay scene" is a classic Chris Morris line.

Claire's last scene: it's not clear whether she's unaware that her allegation against Nathan is false (if it is), or whether she knows, but is still pissed off at him/the world for ruining her story.

I can't decide whether Morris/Brooker seems to be parodying Morris with Johnathon Yeah?'s prank.

The models are 6 years older than their stated ages. We know and accept Jonatton's explanation on that at this point. Claire knows and accepts this. But because Nathan thought he was having sex with a 13 year-old girl (and actually ejaculated with this thought firmly in mind), Claire decides that, morally, he did have sex with a 13 year old girl.

Actually, this theme runs through the whole series. People only think Sugarape magazine is called Rape (they don't see the "suga" but cos it's small), but it's okay, say the mag people, because it's really called Sugarape. The models only look like they're 13, but it's okay, because they're 18. Even Nathan's haircut only looks like it's messy, in fact it's carefully-wrought and expensive. ("Like it's been done at random," explains Nathan, "but if you look closely, you can see that it hasn't, except, you can't tell that?")

I can't decide whether Morris/Brooker seems to be parodying Morris with Johnathon Yeah?'s prank.

Of course there's a reference to the Brasseye pedophilia special here. Morris sees a spectrum of ways of being wrong in this kind of situation. You can be wrong like "the idiots" and hide behind moronic irony, or you can be wrong like Claire and cling to an idiotic literalness, persecuting people for thought-crime. It's the style press versus the tabloids, in a way. Both are fixated on the virtual rather than the real. Both make realities out of perceptions. The criticism here is somewhat Platonic. The whole of Nathan Barley could be situated in Plato's cave, an extended critique of people who think shadowplay is reality. Media people, people like me. And like Morris and Brooker themselves. So it's certainly auto-critique.

I'm not sure that's clear - he seemed panicked and also past the point of no return. I don't know whether there was an element of Momussian* pleasure in among the actual nervous system stuff.

*is the same sense as Sadistic - described by rather than experienced by.

xpost - It would be great if a broadsheet started printing just under their general readership: Are _you_ one of the Observer 700,000?

Speaking of fucked-up 13 year old girls, that movie from last year was pretty good.