Nathan Barley comes to TV

Nathan Barley followed The Simpsons on Ch4.

That must have been the bit where Alan Partridge shouted 'AHA!' for the first time. Or perhaps the bit where the molasses spilled all over Stan Laurel's dungarees...

The TV Nathan Barley did come across like a harmless Partridge/Brent deluded fool type for his sensible-like-us stooges (Ascroft, Tim etc) to roll eyes at, but as a charecter he paled next to those, therefore it dissapointed me.

I mean, the crueller it is, the funnier it will be. What I liked about Cunt in TVGH was how it quickly built itself up into an apoplectic fury at it's subject, which was largely missing from the TV version. Pile on the spite and the righteous, bordering-on-unhinged anger and we'll have something special.

9.00pm Cunt
Nathan Barley perches on a bench in Battersea Park fiddling with the special effects settings on an achingly futuristic Sony digital camera, taking motion-blurred monochrome snaps of his old schoolfriend Crispin, who needs a portrait for the opening page of a website showcasing his own downloadable garage MP3s, and is currently standing in front of the Peace Pagoda, sucking his cheeks in and staring at a tree in the distance.
Do you think you're some kind of fucking Renaissance man just because you've got a few ostensibly creative applications and a shitload of money to spend on high-tech gagetry? Do you have any idea how many other fuckheads all over the world are, right at this very minute, using precisly the same technology to produce precisly the same pedestrian results as you? Why don't you just take all your software, all your gadgets, all your pointless digital fuckery-foo and hurl the lot of it right into the fucking sea? You're using it to churn out shit. Get a fucking grip. You're a cunt; you have always HAVE been a cunt and you always WILL be a cunt - a useless, artless, soulless, worthless, hateful, sickening, handful-of-you-own-shit-fucking, cunt-chewing, cunt-eyed cunt. And your lazy, delusional stabs at creativity aren't fooling anyone, so stop trying. Prick. Our research team would like to talk to you: call 020 7656 7018
Producer Lo-Slung Denim

"I imagined the dreadful day when I can no longer derive the faintest pleasure from my Paul Smith polished berunia condom applicator. But, then again, I might be rapturously anticipating my life as a sunbeam, singing tra-las to the season of mists and kissing the pates of the ludicrous. Or what if I've been run over, pierced by a spear of frozen piss from a passing airliner, or stabbed by one of The Observer weirdos who've set up a daily Geefe vigil in the pub on the corner?

In turmoil, I faxed the editor a selection of starts for my column for 22 August. He hated them all. `… what the fuck's this: "I've been wondering this week whether sharble should be the word for a grain of instant coffee that hasn't dissolved by the time you drink it"?' I told him that would be what I'd write if I'd come to terms with my death to the extent that I no longer bothered to mention it at all."

It's funny and it's bewildering. And it's hard to say that The Idiots, with their unpredictable new fads and foibles, aren't just as funny and just as fruitfully brow-furrowing. Or am I mixing up Mark S's As and Bs? Is it always clear which is which? Which is good bewilderment and which bad? Which deserves BAFTAs and which bullets?

(i mean maybe the above: i'm not saying it's an iron law) (i kinda think it is but i wouldn't know how to prove this)

i think i wz actually watching futurama on DVD: the second simpsons wz v.poor and i needed cheerin up)

* = iain lee

That's fair comment - I became so exasperated with various exchanges on those boards 2-3 years ago that I now have a tendency to tar everyone with the same broad brush of disdain; SOTCAA seemed to have been set up with the premise that everything was going to rubbish and no one else would say so (but here are some nice downloads/articles/edit logs) and I was never very comfortable with that. It's rather like when someone 'leaves' ILX - "Why did you stop posting?" "Cos they're all wankers." Not remotely true but you can kinda see their point...

("Actually caring to look" would unfortunately involve scanning down page after page of commentary on various threads some possibly started months and months ago; it's not really worth the effort once you've left that circle. I was really reacting to the front page editorial piece).

I do feel like I've semi-arbitrarily decided to stick up for NB, or at least give it a go, because of the assumed comedy-webgeek negative consensus, but the points made above are good (and some actually sting. "Bubble"?)

many xposts

Also see Barley and the idiots chuckling over, bigging up and claiming Dan Ashcroft's The Rise of The Idiots piece, which they somehow didn't realise was an attack on them - they liked it because it was 'cool' or whatever. That can't be helped, it seems. Yeah? Totally.

the unclarity of the line is what makes the comedy, or something? when does "you"ll always be a cunt" stop being pitilessly OTM and start being a bit fascist? depends on who's saying it, and what their access to power and airwave-policing is: ricky gervaise = someone (for me) who keeps stepping back and forth over the line (consciously: i mean, its the line he's playing with, the line that makes him funny - and the fact that it unsettles me rather than makes me complacent is what i like abt it - but to do this it has to risk being actual real bullyboy stuff)

(x-post because I haven't got a television, Stevem)

OTM. Homer was always lovably stupid, but there was a point when the writers decided to make him a jerk. It seems they were trying to catch up with South Park by injecting some cruelty, but Homer isn't Cartman. The heart has gone from these episodes and the jokes aren't all that great either.

out of the recent C4 run two or three (out of what, ten?) have been pretty funny (eg i quite liked run lisa run) (tho actually i wz on the phone for half of it), but this just sets you up for sadness :(

what i disliked abt ned's themepark to maude wz that misplaced "heart" rather than the absence of it

Dan Ashcroft is obviously the raging voice in Cunt, hopefully we'll see him blow up properly at some point. Pingu could be a good character as well but they just need to slow it the fuck down.

disagree somewhat and would cite Dan's slow agonising 'death' at the meeting with the Weekend On Sunday - and we know Nathan is all about the non-stop babble so the comparisons to The Office can't stretch too far because it's a totally different situation

haven't seen enough of morris's MEAN SPIRITED side yet, though.

Just like those 1980s yoof shows that flashed tons of text on the screen for a second, encouraging otaku viewers to freeze frame the (analogue) video afterwards and read it all, "Nathan Barley" has a wealth of satirical graphic design just begging to be (digitally) pause buttoned: magazine articles, posters, T shirt slogans... It also has an audience (well, if they're like me, anyway) which cares enough about such things to freeze a frame to read the 'Anorexic Bitch' T shirt or check whether Pingu is wearing Bathing Ape.

Personally, I thought the first ep of 'Nathan Barley' was pretty good. Wasn't quite as vitriolic as I was expecting, but I guess the 'Cunt' listings from TVGoHome wouldn't really translate to broadcast telly that well.

That one-second shot of the guy wearing the miniscule hat was the biggest laugh I've had from TV from quite a few years.

Well sort of, the key theme of all this would seem to be the conflict between stupidly high expectations and less impreesive reality. If I didn't know Morris and Brooker were behind it I'm not sure how I would feel about it, as I sid the more I think about it the worse it seems.

The Nathan Barley piece in yesterday's Guardian Guide featured lots of characters that weren't in episode one, which doesn't bode well for it from this aspect.

I think Armando Ianucci's stuff is similar on the not-lol-funny thing, his stuff's just compelling as a sort of mixture of absurd/chuckle-funny/oddly poignant.

the show reminded me of the Sleazenation offices so badly i thought i was living through a flashback.

why? the Broadcast was being, er, broadcast by Pingu, the only sympathetic character in the whole thing.

are Banksy and the rathergood videos people going to be happy being lumped in with this lot? do you think they agreed to it or is it just another case of NB stealing / doing bad versions of things that are (were) innovative?

(teardrop explodes' sleeping gas in there right at the very end too.)

that one of morris's touchstone themes seems to be "fuck the world for it is infested w.ppl self-convinced they're at the cutting-edge-of-where-it's-at but not (=A), at the expense of the ppl who ARE at the cutting-edge-of-where-it's-at (=B)" - but actually the overlooked victims are all the ppl nowhere near the CEoWIA (i mean, whether or not you grant this mythical beast walks the earth anyway, or is worth seekin out) (=C)

ie it (unintentionally) fosters a dubious gradient B » A » C

otm, but isn't the gradient is more c>b>a??

and class is seemingly absent from this series. everyone has a normal south eastern accent, not really posh, not really not; just that some of them mysteriously have more money than others. so straight away the great big thumps morris throws in the direction of barley are great big thumps at nothing very substantial.

the bikes were good though

Then I thought about Ashcroft. He's also bored with his life - surrounded by fevered egos, yet a fevered ego himself. The only difference is that he's aware of it, which makes it more tragic. The boredom of his own existence saps his energy, making it impossible for him to leave, yet loathing himself since he has to stay. He lurches from vitriolic attacks at everyone around him, to BECOMING like those around him.

And then I thought about NB. He's bored, so he tries to make everyone's life more interesting, including his own. He's in a state of blissful ignorance, and sees himself as above the grey soup he looks down upon, not realising that it's just greyness that he spits out himself.

Momus makes a point about there being so much going on in the frames - the clever little design points, the split-second in-jokes. Now imagine if your whole life was like that - everything you saw, heard or did was loaded and marked for your attention. In the same way that if everything is marked in Bold, nothing is highlighted, if everything is interesting, nothing interests you. Which can only lead to boredom. Maybe that's at the heart of it all.

Or maybe they are just caricatures of 5yr old stereotypes, monkey-dancing for our amusement in a tirade of cheap shots and barely funny metaphors, looking up from a mud splattered face as the dotcom-bashing zeitgeist zooms into the past. I guess time will tell.