Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 05:41:06 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Nathan Barley - It's Well Rubbish

Started by Neil, February 03, 2005, 08:48:54 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Do you think Chris Morris is as funny as he used to be?

No
304 (58.5%)
Yes
216 (41.5%)

Total Members Voted: 520

Voting closed: February 03, 2005, 08:48:54 PM

Anonymarse

http://www.sundayherald.com/47523

The face of a new generation




Preview By Damien Love



THAT Chris Morris – whose curse it is to have been the single most influentially creative force in British broadcasting for the past dozen years – is breaking television cover for the first time since the notorious Brasseye paedophile special of 2001 is already enough to have the usual knee-jerkers itching to react. That he's doing so with a piece of work adapted from something called C*** (the word generally regarded as the most offensive in the English language), would seem to confirm such yearningly outraged suspicions. But Nathan Barley, a modestly magnificent sitcom, is stranger, more conventional, sadder and almost sweeter than anyone could have expected.
The brainchild of TV critic Charlie Brooker, Morris's co-writer, C*** was a highlight of Brooker's TVGoHome, a lovingly, hatefully rendered website consisting of fake, fever-dream TV listings. (Brooker came up with the fictional show Vin Diesel's 500 Favourite Tartans; Channel 4 trumped him with the authentic Trains With Pete Waterman.)

In Brooker's mind, C*** was a fly-on- the-wall documentary series about Nathan Barley. Described as " media wannabe who genuinely deserves to die", Barley was a young, moneyed, slavishly stylish web-designer, mash-up-scratch-mix- guerrilla-film-maker and all-round ovine, honking poseur.

Most of all, though, he was focus for Brooker's loathing of people like that. Although his eye for the specific hideousness of the haircuts, T-shirts, hats, trousers, phones, opinions and gadgets the Nathans of the world parade around was deliciously acute, C*** was essentially a one-joke piece, and the joke wasn't about Nathans so much as Brooker's utter, near-paralysing hatred of them.

In translating him to the screen, though, something strange has happened. While Brooker and Morris undoubtedly continue to despise all the other Nathans out there, they seem to have developed a tiny, grudging affection for their own.

Make no mistake, this Nathan remains a complete toad, at times – as when, later in the series, he raps a ragga commentary on his own performance while in bed with a girl – almost too senselessly odious to watch. And yet, purely because of how he's played by relative newcomer Nicholas Burns – fixed, sleepy eyes, gangling gait, rabbity grin – this braying git has also developed a sickly glimmer of something that could almost be mistaken for charm. In acknowledgement, Morris and Brooker have one of the series's few entirely likable characters, Claire Ashcroft (Claire Keelan), an earnest would-be film-maker, actually mistake it for charm – and end up being rapped at in bed as a result.

Disembowelling the tragically trendy isn't new, and fashion-obsessed media clowns are an easy target. Neither of these facts, however, means you shouldn't have a go at them. What pushes Nathan Barley beyond this one joke, however, is a new current of despair mixed among the general, raging, loathing.

At some point, I suspect, Brooker realised a large percentage of his online audience probably consisted of Nathans; indeed, that a website of spoof TV listings was something Nathan might do. (Actually, Nathan's website, trashbat.co.ck – "Dot-cock, right? Registered in the Cook Islands?" – seems to exist primarily to show off his new mobile phone, which resembles something William S Burroughs coughed up.)

Similarly, Morris has seen a generation of pygmies play among the ashes of themes and styles he trailblazed. In any case, a sense of culpable angst seems to have fed the creation of the programme's real hero, Claire's brother Dan, a writer for style-bible magazine Sugar Ape, who has found himself guru to exactly the idiots he despises.

It's Julian Barratt's performance as Ashcroft that really makes me want to go and watch Nathan Barley again right now. Barratt is one half of the wilfully surreal comedy duo The Mighty Boosh. I liked The Boosh, but was held back from loving them by the awareness I could never get as far into their addled fantasyland as they were. Here, though, Barratt is the realest thing in sight. He walks around distracted but acutely aware he's drowning. Wearing a look of perpetual, fearful, bewildered disgust, he's stranded, frozen and baffled. He wants out of the yammering Sugar Ape world, but doubts he's capable of functioning anywhere else. With long black curly hair and an adventurer's moustache, he looks like a dejected musketeer.

Voiceovers collide at one point to highlight the chasm between what Ashcroft thinks he's writing and what the people who read it actually hear. Without sticking it in your face, Nathan Barley is loaded with many more layers of information, aural and visual, than a regular sitcom. Tapestries of music throb constantly. You need freeze-frame eyes to catch all the textural details: Sunday supplements promising stories like "Nicky Campbell: The Curse Of My Brilliance"; warped graffiti graphics; despicable video-art; fly posters advertising performances by "Aborted Tom".

At this level, if you're looking for Morris to be doing this kind of thing, it continues the virtually-real, ridiculously heightened acid-absurd cultural assault of old. But Morris's direction is a step back from that frontline, and a leap away from the intense, slow, sucking, ambient black nightmare of his Jam series. It's surprisingly straight and light – and, for the first time, we have, in Claire and Dan, Morris dealing with characters he might actually care about. This could turn out to be important.

Held up as both God and Satan, Morris has been such an important figure that backlash is inevitable. He's condemned to be accused either of producing more of the same, or of loss of edge, and even those who used to loathe him are lining up to explain why he's not as good as he used to be.

It's the first sitcom adapted from a website, but Nathan Barley is not a zeitgeist-surfing portrait of our age. It's based on something called C***, but it's not going to jam switchboards with complaints. But for anyone who considers it a pleasure to simply be around while someone like Morris is still operating – someone who understands his medium inside out, yet wants to understand it more, and follows no agenda but his own – Nathan Barley is to be explored, perhaps adored. Filled with clowns and crisis, it's, at least, a decent laugh on a Friday night. I suspect Morris wants that as much as anyone.

06 February 2005

Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer

TJ wrote:

Quote
QuoteHooray! He's satirising the gays at last! Nathan Barley is Bo'Selecta for the university class.

No, not him. Mr Troll Pants up there, I meant.

Ah, sorry. Still, could we assume that Morris and Brooker will make plenty of jokes about bum sex, cottaging ad nauseum?

Neil

Horza has very kindly offered to mirror some files for us, so I've spent the last few days uploading the Music Shows and all of On The Hour.  Please do not take the piss when downloading or you'll shag it up for everyone.

http://cab.puffpastryhangman.com

Many thanks to Horza forthe mirroring, and please do try and use the torrents on UkNova before going to his mirror.

Sulphagne

Thanks very much for this -- the wireless router in our flat's a bit shit, in that it slows the connection down to about a tenth of the usual speed if there's so much as one torrent running, so this is much appreciated.

gazzyk1ns

Possibly (well, probably...) irrelevant, so apologies if you already know this:

You should tell your Bit Torrent client to limit your upstream to about 90% of max whilst downloading, i.e. before it is complete and you become a seed. Otherwise the downstream will be severely affected, TCP/IP works in a way whereby it needs to receive "acks" (acknowledgements) from the other end (your PC) that a packet of data has been successfully transmitted. It won't transmit the next packet to you until it has received that "ack"... so you can see how maxing out your upstream, which is what opening a popular torrent file will do by default, will seriously affect your connection. Limiting the max. upload whilst you're still completing the torrent isn't being stingy, it'll mean you get the whole file and become a seed quicker.

Again, sorry if you knew that, but a lot of people assume that their client/PC is being awkward with Bit Torrent when it's just the natural effect of hammering their upstream.


Just a quick thought guys, sorry if I'm wrong or if this is known....

Charlie Brooker used to write for pc magazine PC Zone, i have in my hand this moment the 10th anniversary edition in which he re-appears to reminisce. When telling what he's been at he says, and I quote "I started the TV Go Home website which grew into a book and a lowbudget TV series." This issue is from April 2003. Another interesting note is that they tracked him to his studios in Soho, which is also where Morris has his offices is it not?

Not sure what relevance this has, just thought I'd try stir the shit a little.

Just a quick thought guys, sorry if I'm wrong or if this is known....

Charlie Brooker used to write for pc magazine PC Zone, i have in my hand this moment the 10th anniversary edition in which he re-appears to reminisce. When telling what he's been at he says, and I quote "I started the TV Go Home website which grew into a book and a lowbudget TV series." This issue is from April 2003. Another interesting note is that they tracked him to his studios in Soho, which is also where Morris has his offices is it not?

Not sure what relevance this has, just thought I'd try stir the shit a little.

PS, Fucking nice one on those mirrors man, I've got fucking BitTorrents that cant read those torrents and I have been gaggin for those radio one shows. (one at a time.) Is there any torrents or mirrors for GLR?

The Fanciful Norwegian

QuoteWhen telling what he's been at he says, and I quote "I started the TV Go Home website which grew into a book and a lowbudget TV series." This issue is from April 2003.

There was a low-budget TV series based on TV Go Home in 2001 (called "TV Go Home," oddly enough). It wasn't very good, apparently. Anyway that's what he was referring to, it wasn't a subtle hint about NB, which is probably not terribly low-budget.

kate

http://www.newstatesman.com/200502140045

Andrew Billen - Triumph of idiots
Television
Andrew Billen
Monday 14th February 2005



Television - Chris Morris proves why we need him in a yoof-full satire. By Andrew Billen

Nathan Barley (Channel 4)

When did the middle-aged insult "yoof" enter the language? A long time back: 15, maybe 20, years ago. Those it was first used against must be middle-aged themselves by now. Yet despite the admirable efforts of Beavis and Butt-head and South Park, it has taken that long for television to satirise the concept effectively. In Nathan Barley (Fridays, 10pm), Chris Morris and the Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker finally do so by pointing their artillery at the factories that create the culture rather than its consumers. After all, as Auberon Waugh once said of the working classes, it is not the people we dislike, but their culture.

Nathan, the nominal hero, is actually the programme's chief villain, a youth superficial all the way down. We meet him skimming along the pavement on a mini-bike on a "fly-op", distributing adverts for his website, Trashbat.co.ck (it's registered in the Cook Islands). "It's well fucking futile," he tells "me n**ger" and the other puzzled citizens at the bus stop. His boast does not mislead. Futile it is. The website is divided into Latest (Damian on webcam addressing us while high, or low, on "colossally concentrated" TCP), Diaree (we have yet to be treated), Pranks (one involves Nathan connecting a lorry battery to the earlobes of a member of his staff) and Other Stuff (cartoons about monkeys).

Nathan wears two Bluetooth ear sets, and in the extremis of sub-musical composition straps himself inside a straitjacket of electronic paraphernalia. His mobile phone is a Waso T-12, a Japanese model that features a larger number-five key "because it's the most common number". He is a Zappuccino-drinking, "self-facilitating, media node", who thinks "credo" is spelt and pronounced "credos". Nick Burns, who plays him, does well not to make him so irritating he is impossible to watch.

His would-be nemesis is the pathetically flawed Dan Ashcroft, who in the opening episode has the misfortune to run into him twice in one morning. Dan works for a Dazed and Confused rip-off called Sugar Ape, currently rebranding itself "suga RAPE" and edited by a guy who calls himself "Jonatton Yeah?". Sugar Ape's target reader is Nathan Barley, and the magazine is written by young men as cretinously neophiliac as he. Dan's mistake is to have turned 30, perhaps even 35, and, in a Damascene moment, to have realised that he is surrounded and read by morons. In a career high, he writes an article about the "triumph of the idiots" aimed at fellow hacks and Nathans, all of whom, naturally, regard it as a masterpiece.

His diatribe is spotted by a middlebrow newspaper called the Weekend on Sunday whose audience consists of slightly older idiots. At first Dan thinks accepting the call to a job interview would be selling out. But after a particularly infantile editorial conference, in which his colleagues play a version of the schoolyard game rock, paper, scissors ("cock, muff, bumhole"), he sees it as his escape route. The problem is that when he is interviewed beneath framed covers of the Weekend on Sunday Magazine (sample cover line - "Tom Paulin: haunted by rumour"), his potential employers quickly discover he doesn't know anything. Dan's one subject is how rubbish his own culture is and, tragically, it is the only culture he has. Julian Barratt portrays Dan raggedly as a Dostoevskian misfit, adrift in his career, betrayed by his own preoccupations. He is not even particularly nice. The quality of niceness is instead awarded to his sister Claire (Claire Keelan), a documentary-maker who vaguely registers that there is a life outside the trendy end of Shoreditch. As we leave her at the end of episode one, it seems she, too, will be seduced by Nathan's know-nothing bumptiousness.

The character of Nathan was created by Brooker on his TV Go Home website, and it is his good fortune to have been teamed up with the perfectionist Morris. There is so much detail to enjoy. You need to freeze-frame to spot a girl wearing a "Stupid Anorexic Bitch" T-shirt, or that the cappuccino comes from Grind Zero. When Claire pitches an idea for a TV documentary, it is to the indie that made Nazi Experiments in Colour. This is a world in which words have ceased to signify thought.

Reviewing this programme gave me an excuse to look again at Morris's previous satires on the media, The Day Today and Brass Eye. Although the former is now a decade old, its parody of TV news conventions remains uncannily accurate. The only surprise is that Jeremy Paxman, spoofed by Morris as a sneering bully, had a career after it. Brass Eye equally repays another viewing. Its controversial 2001 special on the media frenzy over paedophiles has weathered into a classic. Both programmes passed an important test: when I switched off the DVD and turned on the real news, I could barely tell the difference.

The middle-aged in spirit who waited so long for yoof to be tackled will not like Nathan Barley: they will misidentify its language and irreverence as part of the problem. Fans of Morris as an actor will miss him in this sitcom (as do I). Hoxton yoof dotcommers will complain that it is already out of date. But in challenging the bad faith of the media wherever he spots it, Morris demonstrates why we need him. He is the equal of Malcolm Muggeridge in his prime, our greatest living Englishman.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times


This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition.

butnut


I can't remember my name

off topic -

[Anal]Dune was the film that Lynch did instead of  The Empire strikes back, not return of the jedi [/anal]

Sorry.

dronbod

Appalling. Appalling. Appalling. Anyone who suggests that the Chris Morris of this decade is one fiftieth as funny as he behind GLR has no taste. It's NOT A SUBJECTIVE MATTER. The only thing subjective about it is the proof. It can't be proved. It's just obvious to anyone with an atom of taste, passion, love, contempt.

euch.

Heartbreakingly bad.  Had this site not pre-warned me of it's awfulness I'd have . . . well, it doesn't bear thinking about.  A very sad day.  Still, there's always the past . . .

Anonymous

Well, it certainly was below-standard. Ultimately I think the 'golden-age' syndrome that we're all privy to will take over, but it is undoubtedly sub-standard when compared with his previous work. What has Morris been doing since My Wrongs?

fuss

no..it was definately jedi BTW

nathan barley?
build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down build them up/knock them down

mat_hob

I really don't understand the harsh attack on Nathan Barley, i watched it last night and thought it was excellent.  The first time you see Nathan on the mini bmx was very funny, i have seen people riding ridiculously small bikes and its about time this whole "fashion over thought" scene was ridiculed on national television.  Some of the performances of the idiots were over the top, but isn't that the point?  Sitcoms have exaggerated characters! i think the comparisons to the Office are unfair as its a completely different kind of show, yes some times Nathan resembles a caricature of David Brent in the things that he says, but so what!  Does the Office mean that no-one can do that kind of  character anymore? By the end of of the second series of the Office David Brent had become a caricature of David Brent from the first series, all the way  up to the awful dance scene which killed all the sublte excellent comedy in the rest of the series!   The people i watched it with also found it very funny.  All in all i think it was good first episode with good comedy characters and i dont know how different the aired episode was to the one you saw, but apart from one scene i saw none of the bad direction mentioned.

I have followed Chris Morris's work since On The Hour on radio 4.  I am quite happy with what he does with his comedy because, plain and simple, he keeps making me laugh!!!  Roll on the next episode.

Severus

I've been totally bemused for weeks by Neil's anti-Barley attitude and now I've seen the show that feeling has grown into full-scale astonishment.

Okay, so Barley himself is a bit annoying but Ashcroft is a highly sympathetic character and the ratio of decent jokes definitely improved after the ad break.

As has been alluded to above, it's very easily possible to see Ashcroft as Morris and The Idiots as his most vocal fans -which off course would make Neil=Nathan and no doubt piss him off a tad.

Apart from that the only other reason I can see, and probably more likely,  is that Neil is an obscurist at heart and really doesn't like anything this mainstream. The claim that CM's best work is some local radio show that practically no one outside this forum has ever heard of is a case in point.

This is the best known and best fansite for Morris on the web. These days, it's also full of more negative and downright rude comments about the man than even the Daily Mail can muster. It's clear that Neil has instigated this but I can't help but think "why?", and then again, in capitals "WHY?"

fanny splendid

If Ashcroft is Morris, it perhaps explains his gradual downward slide. Where once he rallied against the rise of the idiots, as we saw last night, he has become one. It's easier to exist on your past merits, while surrounded by fawning idiots, than to accept that you've lost your way. Perhaps it's telling that Ashcroft's desire to stay in the scene is so great, that he is willing to write for a magazine he detests, rather than move on.

I don't feel any sympathy towards the Ashcroft character at all. I actually think he's rather pathetic. He is an idiot become self aware. The idiots aren't people sat in front of a computer discussing comedy, they're media industry clichés. The trouble is, you either are one, or you don't care; and that's the problem with the show. Nathan Barley is a one dimensional, thirty second sketch. He should be in the Fast Show: every week doing something stupid that we can all laugh at. Ha, ha, ha...

The comments on this site might be negative about Chris Morris's work, but never against the man. I don't think I have ever read anything rude about Morris, at least nothing as personal as your attacks on Neil.

Severus

fanny,

I dont particularly disagree with your assessment of Ashcroft but I think there's a difference between a sympathetic character and the embodiment of human perfection. Despite his flaws I found myself liking him.

As for the rudeness thing, I did really mean that this site was disparaging about his work and that's what I've found surprising.  Can now see I was unclear on that. Stupid of me.

It was also Neil's work here I was questioning, of course. Still, if calling someone an obscurist can be construed as an attack, I am obviously one mean badass. Sorry.

JATTERFRAT

Nathan Barley is clearly not the best thing that CM has ever produced, but I still found it funny.  I thought most of the characters (Dan Ashcroft in particular) were belivable, funny, and well acted  and i can only see it getting better as the series goes on.  This was not  the disater that this site had led me to believe that it would be.  I enjoyed this. Did i enjoy it more than All of CM's older stuff? Probably not, but it is still alot better than almost everything else out there at the moment.

PS if the GLR show were so good, will you please get the links for it working again, please.

slim

Quote from: "Severus"As has been alluded to above, it's very easily possible to see Ashcroft as Morris and The Idiots as his most vocal fans -which off course would make Neil=Nathan and no doubt piss him off a tad.
How many times are we going to hear this angle with no discussion to back it up? I don't read that the people here are like Nathan at all. I think you've missed the point entirely there. Give examples of some aspects of Neil's (or anyone elses) character that make you think they're Nathan Barley. If anything, it makes the twats who hang around him in media circles, like Ayoade or whoever, the idiots, playing the idiots. I don't recall many of us here living and/or working in the media in London.

Your theory just doesn't work. You're talking bollocks.

JATTERFRAT

This is all well and good, but who found it funny/unfunny? It is a comedy afterall.

Jonathon Yeah?

...it was quite good. Not amazing, but quite good. I'm expecting/hoping the following weeks to pick up even more.

By the way, when are registrations going to be enabled?

Mr. Lizard

Really, Im astonished at the general negative comments regarding Nathan Barley on this site.
Why oh why have people watched it and said ridiculous things like "its not as good as The Office"  and "I only laughed twice" ?
It is not trying to be The Office - or a laugh out loud comedy filled with cheap gags. Personally, I liked The Office, and I like this - but I have the mental capacity to realise they are totally different programs.

The satirical ribbing of the youth/pop/internet culture was just fantastic and filled with extremely accurate observations.  
The way the idiots ended  each sentence with "yeah?" and the way they spoke using the incredibly irritating "rising intonation" in their voices had me in stitches. The obvious reference to the FCUK symbol with the SugaRAPE symbol -  I could go on, fantastic. Those people who say Nathan Barley's dont exist in real life mustn't get out very often is all I can say !

I just dont know what the haters are thinking- really - what the hell were you expecting ?

Morris has just satirised a whole community of net-nerd,  FCUK-wearing, scooter-riders. Effectively, he has turned on many of his "fan-base" - shock horror !

I'm not surprised many of you don't like it - perhaps it just struck too many chords with your own materialism ? Now go and gel your hair into a pretty little peak and watch some re-runs of "Friends" or something.

Keith Murmur

I rather enjoyed it. Give it time. It will grow like a nice plump cyst on a refurbished aagaa.

swig-faced mute

You seem to have been very harsh on this show, although I am glad you told us your preview viewing of NB was  "well rubbish", because i was expecting nothing, and when I got an above average show i was chuffed to bits. Your innaccuarcy made my viewing all the more pleasent.

I was prepared for the whole sugarape/suga rape joke from this forum, but i didn't know they'd do it as an "fcuk" parody, (like Mr Lizard noticed as well) - absolutely ingenious!

There was no noticable bad directing as far as im concerned, but then again im no Speilberg. It was just funny. Not funny throughout like the Day Today, Jam or BrassEye, but still funny. So, okay maybe its not as consistently funny as Morris's best, but there was no need for this scathing hatred of the show really.

Anonymous

Bravo .  The reactions to "Round Our Ken" were similarly tough, but it sailed up the popularity charts like a chrome bullet  ejaculated from a very fast gun.

Keith Murmur

...there seems to be a lot of guests on this infohole today.

Keith Murmur



Did anyone notice the "I Heart  My Ronco Hardcore Compilation?"