Nathan Barley comes to TV

from the stills gallery: is this kevin eldon?

http://www.trashbat.co.ck/images/barley/gallery/programme_stills/still_5.jpg

if it is, then my bet's on him.

-- Markelby

Hata.

I haven't seen even a trailer for the show, but I imagine this idea of casting to be the truth.

I think the Daily Mail thing was suggesting that a young Rik Mayall (bear in mind this is the Daily Mail and they aren't quite au fait with the current times) could be the stereotypical obnoxious arsehole, and that Dylan Moran has the cynical world-weariness to play Dan Ashcroft.

Anyway, I am not defending the daily mail, but, as you were...

I didn't realise, not having read (read?) 'shoreditch twat', that morris had spawned a band of this kind of neologistic followers but I got the broad generalities.

the nathan barley charater/actor was completely unconvincing

he seemed pretty much in keeping with the TVGH character

I think the point of the character was "Hi, I'm popular TV critic Charlie Brooker, and man do I meet some foolish people in my ever-so-rivetting life".

That wasn't even Chris Morris' "Max And Paddy". It was Chris Morris' Tony Ferrino.

(xpost)

the scene with the Weekend On Sunday editor...maybe lacking the poise of The office but reminded me of it a lot

i liked it when he joined in 'cock muff bumhole' at the end too, the sense of hopelessness and resignation was well captured.

They humour is that they're idiots. We are supposed to identify with the Ashcrofts here. But seriously, I don't really, to be honest. The real bite would have been the rage of 'AND THESE FUCKHEADS ACTUALLY EXIST AND GET PAID AND ARE UTTER CUNTS' but actually, they're all on the dole because their dotcoms crashed and it's all a huge case of missing your moment. The TVGH show should have been this. The time was right then.

Clapham seems to be a major gathering place for these people now, though.

Well, only in the way the best lyrics are the ones we mishear and turn out to have made up ourselves. The headline was actually "Tom Paulin: Haunted By Rumour". Which I think is funnier.

i'm not sure - i thought so at first but it soon became clear that he was a pitiful character, somewhere between David Brent and Tim for me. actually that's me in a nutshell, maybe. ack.

the timing thing isn't so relevant for me because of this 'nostalgia' aspect mentioned upthread, plus the humour relying a great deal on just the absurd exaggeration of it all. i can enjoy it whilst thinking back to my own experiences as a numeeja design underling and personal hatred/envy conflicts re Hoxditch hype.

I'm bored to the back teeth of the SOTCAA/NotBBC/Cook'd and Bomb'd crowd - those forums were always like the most soul-sapping aspects of ILX and it's no surprise that they loathe this. Imagine an ILM where all the threads were about much worse everything is getting and how even the bands we liked have lost it. Oh, wait...

Morris is stuck with being lorded as the undisputed heavyweight comic genius of our time so if he turns something out that's slightly to the left of the money, or three-fifths as good as Peep Show or whatever, it's a calamity and a Slade musical written with Richard Stilgoe can only be round the corner.

The reviewers who've said it gets uncomfortably close to The Office are right; it's The Office transplanted to a loft where The Play Ethic has gone mad. But I think that's okay; The Office was simply the precursor of a new school of 'embarrassment comedy', and Morris and Brooker are big enough not to stand in its shadow. What's good about this embarrassment comedy thing is that it really makes you feel with the characters. That keeps it from being a Vanity Fair or Rake's Progress or Beggar's Opera-style ensemble piece, just a parade of unsympathetic fops and bullies.

And I have to say I was snorting with embarrassed laughter at scenes like the one where Nathan goes into an Asian newsagent and calls the owner 'my nigga'. Horrific, yes. Over the top, well, not really; I know people who would almost do that.

There's a constant stream of references to massacres, exploitation, atrocities... 9/11, Mai Lai, Hitler, 'that cool e mail of a woman being bummed by a wolf...' These events are all trivialised by Barley for the sake of some kind of banal 'normative aggression', and seen as essentially no different from the pranks he plagues his shy, sensitive assistant with. Or perhaps the pranks are just massacres and atrocities scaled down to chick-pea size, web dimensions. The thing I'm wondering, though, is whether the reverse situation wouldn't be worse. If The Idiots made no reference to Vietnam, Hitler, gangsta rap etc and were simply privileged white kids in a playpen, would they be exonerated? In other words, what is the function of this constant transpostion of their antics with atrocity? And if they were no longer pedalling along the streets on tiny bicycles, the cars would have the street to themselves, right? And that would be better... how?

I haven't seen much Morris stuff, but what I have seen made lots of references to atrocities of one kind or another (dog bomb, spot the assassin or something). In fact, that was why I didn't like him.