Nathan Barley comes to TV

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.

Incidentally, has the "Suga" now been dropped? I'd need to rewatch it to make sure, but I seem to rememeber the mag covers just saying "RAPE" this week. I guess the Suga maybe just got even smaller though.

Enrique - I don't think the staff knew about the 13 thing, because it's not like they're shy about the clever tricks they're playing on everyone ("but because we got to touch them, we kind of are, yeah?"). Also Nathan isn't Sugarape staff.

he was worried at the end when claire started telling everyone he'd got a blowjob off a 13 year old.

"She's only 13-years old!"

"What?"

&

"As far as I'm concerned, Nathan, that was a blowjob off a 13-year old."

"This summer’s must-see is Extras, his barbed view of working actors set in green rooms and on movie sets. “We touch on my favourite sins — desperation and ego,” Gervais says. “I get more material from the egos of actors than anything else. And it has always fascinated me, the way actors talk about themselves. “Actors are usually, on the whole, thick, desperate, untalented and always thinking, ‘What about me? What about me?’” Apart from that, Gervais refuses to be drawn."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/images/bbc/150ricky_yctv_portrait.gif

Nathan's now the central figure at last. In the early episodes they had to try and find something for him to do inbetween the Dan scenes, now it was Dan who had the sub-plot - the wank in the bogs scene was this weeks scissors-in-cat's-head: the gratuitous gross-out big-laugh shot. (and Brooker/Morris stuck to a convential comedic power-of-three with Dan "leaking" sugaRAPE flyers to telegraph a pay-off: dropping them once in the office, next in the caff and then finally in the bogs which then meant the builder could find him at the end of the episode (as if Dan would carry SA flyers with him anyway!?))

Best comedy on TV at the moment.

It was a nice surreal motif, I think, that now he's being pwned by Jonattan, these things appear in his pockets/bag of their own accord.

I don't know what's real life and what's chris morris any more.