Nathan Barley comes to TV

Interview: It’s hard to be an idiot
Well dense? Chris Morris and his co-writer explain the sitcom Nathan Barley to Stephen Morris

The first series of Nathan Barley clattered to a close on Channel 4 last weekend, and a quick perusal of the cuttings suggests that the series, written by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker, has to date garnered more column inches than the return of Doctor Who. From wild adulation to astonishingly bad-tempered invective, Nathan Barley’s depiction of the excesses of wigged-out nu-media types more than made up for disappointing ratings with its disproportionate social impact.

Online teen chat rooms spotting self-obsessed idiots refer to them instantly as “a bit of a Nathan Barley”, suggesting the phrase will join “Up to a point, Lord Copper” and “It goes up to eleven” in the rich pantheon of catch phrases that American college professors (and Barleys) like to call memes: sampled and sampled until those who use them aren’t entirely sure why. Others have sought to defend Barleyism, among them the anonymous correspondent who angrily found the truth a little close to home: “I am constantly quoting Robin from vintage Batman cartoons, which is a bit Barleyish,” he huffed in a BBC chat room, “but it can be funny (trust me on this one).”

If the series has made it impossible to claim ironic ownership of kitsch, it will have performed an immeasurable service. From the early 1990s, the possibility of mutilating anything of value, then facing criticism with a sneered “whatever”, has become the dominant cultural discourse. At the same time, the series introduced two actors of startling skill: the stand-up comedian Julian Barratt, whose portrayal of the collapsing style writer Dan Ashcroft was understated and powerful; and a newcomer, Nick Burns, as Nathan, who brought an unexpected depth to a character originally conceived as the archetypal prat.

Amid all the debate on the series, the voices of its creators have been hard to hear. Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker created the show out of a character on Brooker’s website, TvGoHome, but have said little about either their intentions or their response to the criticism. In a brief e-mail chat last week, however, they outlined their views with considerable aplomb. It was well bum.

ST: “Some reviewers have said they were surprised they didn’t hate Barley as much as they were meant to.”

Chris Morris: “Well, if they found they didn’t completely hate Barley, why conclude that they were meant to? Alan Partridge was an arsehole, but how many times do you hear people say, ‘I’m worried I don’t hate him enough’? No matter how heinous someone’s behaviour, if you make them a comic character, you can’t expect people to hate them. Jack T Ripper effectively blew up the planet — do you hate him? “When people say ‘love to hate’, they actually mean ‘love to be appalled by’ — if they truly hated them, they’d never repeat a catch phrase.

“Nathan is not al-Zarqawi. He’s a cocky tool who tries too hard. If you really expect that to summon the full force of your hatred, I’d say you were mentally ill. In a sitcom, you travel with the monster — you don’t just see them from the outside. Even on Charlie’s original TvGoHome website, which has a much more exterior viewpoint than a sitcom, the sheer level of psychotic rage spewed at Barley is part of the joke — it’s implicitly unreasonable.”

Charlie Brooker: “The fury vented in the TVGH listings was so patently over the top, only a bastard couldn’t have felt slightly sorry for Nathan even then. Nathans in general don’t strike me as nasty or scheming — they simply display a rather irritating enthusiasm for life, or rather a version of life that’s essentially an imaginary movie starring themselves in the lead role.”

ST: “Some people seem unable to watch the programme without going into neurotic convulsions over whether it is a sitcom or a satire ...”

CM: “A sitcom isn’t usually the right tool for satire... When you watched I’m Alan Partridge, did you really go, ‘Thank God they’re exploding the hideous world of the local-radio DJ in temporary accommodation’? Or The Office, ‘At last someone’s rodding the paper merchants!’? You can have incidentals that are satirical — background jokes, peripheral characters — but mainly you’re concerned with the psychological flaws of your lead.”

ST: “Great sitcoms always have tragedy somewhere at their heart. Do you see tragedy in the characters in Nathan Barley? Is there hope of redemption?”

CM: “Hmm. Not sure how much tragedy there is in Porridge, Yes, Minister or Seinfeld, but both Dan and Nathan have access to desperation. Nathan is certainly headed for a massive crisis — possibly as soon as his next birthday (he is 26), when a party photo reveals a receding hairline, he finds his string vest riding up on his belly and he is struck by his first true insight into his own uselessness. Twenty-seven is the most common age for men to commit suicide.

“For Dan, with his greater self-knowledge, redemption hovers just out of arm’s reach, and I suspect he will make increasingly desperate lunges for it. One reason we couldn’t hate Nathan is because, beneath the honking idiocy, he is desperate. He cares too much what people think, so he can’t be effortlessly cool — he can only try to appear so. And that’s very hard work: studied nonchalance is driven by a turbocharged insecurity. That’s enough empathy to understand his motives, but not enough to excuse him. The pursuit of approval usually ends in disaster.”

CB: “I think Nathan will end up going crazy, simply because he’s got so many inconsequential choices to make, all of which involve the way he’s perceived. Look at the way mobile phones are marketed — apparently, when you buy one, you’re buying something that will “express who you are”, something others will judge you by. If that’s true, society might as well drown itself in a bucket and have done with it. You should only judge someone by their mobile phone if they’ve hand-painted a swastika on it. But even though you know the whole notion of that is ridiculous, the terror’s going to be bubbling away somewhere in your head next time you’re in Carphone Warehouse looking for a new handset.

“Extrapolate from that one example to cover virtually everything you can think of, from the type of trousers you wear to your views on globalisation, and you’ve got a world full of things for Nathan to take sides on, but never personally analyse. His brain’ll revolt in the end.”

CM: “And you can score Nathans in Manchester, Hastings — I’ve seen a pair in Whitby, and they hadn’t just been blown off course. The world of nu-media gunslingers with nothing to say, and every conceivable way of saying it in a world of gadgets, bars, clothes and mock attitude, is a repeat module in cities across Britain ... the Hoxton label is not ours: it’s the London media’s.”

(kate, did you ever see the end of this? i still have it lying around...)

What format do you have it lying around on?

From Evelyn Waugh novel, "The Scoop".

"up to a point, lord copper" is what his minions say to the newspaper boss when he is talking rubbish

yeah, found the Waugh quote via google. has anyone ever heard anyone else say this though?

Chris Morris, Sunday Times: "Even on Charlie’s original TvGoHome website, which has a much more exterior viewpoint than a sitcom, the sheer level of psychotic rage spewed at Barley is part of the joke — it’s implicitly unreasonable.”

From Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh. I read a fanstatically vicious screed a few years back about people who are incapable of not adding "Lord Copper" after anyone says "up to a point", despite the fact that it completely changes the meaning: "up to a point, Lord Copper", means "you are completely wrong".

Previous to that I'd never heard the phrase, of course.

Nice bit of politics here.

And the Sunday Times too now, you blithering idiots. I suppose you think that by putting air quote marks around your meme meme you somehow get to unfurl the concept without seeing it fluttering high and proud above Windsor Castle, do you? I suppose you think that irony, quotation, commentary on commentary and detachment will save you from postmodernism, you Lord-Peter-Wimsy sized bashybazooking baboons?

http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1998-07-09postmodernism_disrobed.shtml

(the very fact that dawkins summarises those thinkers as "postmodernists" demonstrates the intellectual dishonesty of his own foray into that quagmire)

haha whatever happened to the BRIGHTS!!

CB: “The fury vented in the TVGH listings was so patently over the top, only a bastard couldn’t have felt slightly sorry for Nathan even then".

ie "if you thought you liked it before, then pff, you just didn't get it". Course, this also implies that everything else Charlie Brooker has ever written in that voice (from PC Zone through to Screen Burn) was only pretending to be angry, just for a laugh. Which could well be true, there was always comedy in the nature of his fury. But it was never just his anger that made his stuff great (otherwise he'd just be a cleverer victor meldrew) - it was the *righteousness* of his anger. If he's now saying "I didn't mean it though!" then...well, that makes it all a bit shit, doesn't it?

CM: “Hmm. Not sure how much tragedy there is in Porridge, Yes, Minister or Seinfeld..."

Porridge? They're in Prison! Yes Minister = "Jesus, is our political system really that fucked up?". And Seinfeld? George Costanza??

but did Porridge really ever make clear intentional political statements as deeply as that? then again, does Nathan Barley REALLY?

No, but they still made use of tragedy to provide laffs. Godber complained about his lot, Fletcher mocked him for it, gag.

I'm not actually agreeing with the times interviewer that all comedy requires an element of tragedy, I'm just pointing out that Morris's counter examples to that hypothesis are all a bit weak, which is unusual for him.

I think all these arguments are coming from the fact that the tone of it is pretty unclear. Some base their opinions on Nathan Barley the Satire, some on Nathan Barley the Sitcom, some on Nathan Barley Work of teh God Morris etc. I said further up that this lack-of-discernable-tone was a bad thing, but I'm not so sure now. The further away from it as an event I get the more I like this about it.

Reading the little interview then looking at that Armed Robbery sign made something click. The Brooker bile and anger that many (including Poppa Lynskey) were expecting isn't aimed at Nathan, it's aimed at the viewer, especially the ones freeze-framing until they see the genius and engaging the with the SugarApe world. For an example of how it works look on the Cook'd and Bomb'd forums for peoples disdain for the SugarApe/Rape thing for being a bad, lazy joke then watch the meeting about the new logo.

It's Morris testing the viewer again, like he did in (Blue)Jam, giving you a "Ewwwww!" situation and making you look at it from different points (Barley humiliates, is humiliated, triumphs over humiliation, escapes humiliation) and letting you have a hmmm if you'll let yourself. Yes, Nathan is a Cunt but only out of insecurity and desperation, he's human. And while that's not a whiter-than-white core personality, it's something and he gets somewhere. If you look at the "achievers" in the series they're the Idiots that are going out and Doing Something. 15Peter20, Nathan, Johnatton. The leeches - Dan the slagger-offer, Claire the exploiter don't get anywhere. Dan ends up the ultimate loser by trying to exit-stage-left.

It's a startling humanistic and realistic point that disgust and disengagement are Bad Things. I (now) love the fact it goes against der fanz interpretation of what Nathan was before the series or what the show was going to be and who its targets were. I've just watched 1+2 again with this in mind and enjoyed them far more than I did before. So I guess Momus was right - in many ways this is Morris doing that "How to write a Momus song" thing from Nick's own Trashbat - http://www.imomus.com/index20.html

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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 6:04 pm Post subject:

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purlieu wrote:
23 Daves wrote:
To be honest, I'm tempted to buy this myself. Then again, I really liked the series...
Oh, thank fuck someone else did. I feel so alone EVERYWHERE.

Don't worry Chris, I'm sure the next series will be well-received... har har.

Seriously, there are some people out there that enjoyed it - several friends of mine for one, the indie pop star Momus for another (who got very sniffy about TJ using the Housemartins as a reference point in his Off the Telly review, which I thought I'd crowbar in here since I wasn't sure if TJ had noticed his ramblings or not) and Brian Eno (apparently). But yes, I think it's safe to say that the overwhelming majority of people disliked it or at the very least felt it was nothing better than average. Being a fan of the show is somewhat akin to being one of those mad idiots who thought that The Seahorses was a valid and perfectly good project for John Squire after The Stone Roses. I'm quite able to justify my love for NB in a way that I can't for The Seahorses crap, but it's bloody hard work at times.

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Beloved Aunt

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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 6:16 pm Post subject:

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But Momus *is* Nathan Barley etc

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TJ

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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:43 pm Post subject:

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23 Daves wrote:
Seriously, there are some people out there that enjoyed it - several friends of mine for one, the indie pop star Momus for another (who got very sniffy about TJ using the Housemartins as a reference point in his Off the Telly review, which I thought I'd crowbar in here since I wasn't sure if TJ had noticed his ramblings or not)

What? Where?

I'm actually quite proud to have been criticised by someone so useless. Especially when he's defending something so bad.

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23 Daves

Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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Location: Walthamstow, London
Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 8:38 pm Post subject:

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TJ wrote:
23 Daves wrote:
Seriously, there are some people out there that enjoyed it - several friends of mine for one, the indie pop star Momus for another (who got very sniffy about TJ using the Housemartins as a reference point in his Off the Telly review, which I thought I'd crowbar in here since I wasn't sure if TJ had noticed his ramblings or not)

What? Where?

I'm actually quite proud to have been criticised by someone so useless. Especially when he's defending something so bad.

Somewhere deep on this over-long Nathan Barley thread here:

Nathan Barley comes to TV

He rather tartly comments: "The sentence 'I think The Housemartins would back me up when I say...' is not the best way to start a cohesive argument". Which I think is just a fluffy bit of jokey criticism for the sake of it, at least to my brain.

So there you go - not a tearing critique, admittedly, though one of the other posters on there really likes you as a writer but is 'dis-satisfied' with your Nathan Barley piece. I only stumbled upon this the other day when looking up stuff about Nathan Barley on google - I wanted to see if it's been panned on other Internet forums as well, and sure enough, it has. I wasn't expecting to see your arguments referenced, though.

Some of Momus' points about "Nathan Barley" are interesting, though he does seem to get more and more desperate to defend it as the thread moves on, and consequently talks more and more nonsense. Not that I've any right to criticise on that score, I realise...

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TJ

Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 8:42 pm Post subject:

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23 Daves wrote:
He rather tartly comments: "The sentence 'I think The Housemartins would back me up when I say...' is not the best way to start a cohesive argument". Which I think is just a fluffy bit of jokey criticism for the sake of it, at least to my brain.

Well, all I can say to Mr Currie is the old adage about people in glass houses.

Quote:
So there you go - not a tearing critique, admittedly, though one of the other posters on there really likes you as a writer but is 'dis-satisfied' with your Nathan Barley piece.

That's fair enough really. I wouldn't agree that it was 'badly written' though.

Blue Jam > Chris Morris Radio Show > Day Today > Brass Eye > Jam > On The Hour > Nathan Barley

I still don't think Barley is bad, but dear god, just TRY rewatching it again. Instead, watch Iannucci's THE THICK OF IT. Now there's good DTD Alumnieties.

Yes, that is him and yes, "Absolute Power" is the single vilest TV programme I have ever laid eyes on