Nathan Barley

[Shaky]

The main issue with the show is it's all bite and no, er, trousers. For all it's bile it never manages to hang together and none of the episodes are particularly well plotted, paced or directed - perhaps because it was brand new territory for Morris and Brooker. The constant compound phrases seemed very sub-Brass Eye and lazy even at the time. "Well Jackson" "Keep it foolish" "Totally Mexico" etc are hardly up there with, say, Roboplegic Wrongcock. You could make the argument Nathan hasn't the wit to come up with anything better but it doesn't really matter in the end, they're still banal, lumpen things to listen to in every episode. "Geek Pie" for fuck's sake. "SugaRape." None of it really lands. None of the actors really seem to know how to deliver the lines either, with only Barrett being consistently decent.

That said, I do find it a strangely fascinating watch with OK nuggets here and there... it's just a missed opportunity overall.

[lazyhour]

Watching it now for the first time in years. It's absolutely fucking awful. The timing and pacing (or lack of it) kills anything that might have been funny stone dead. It's just all so flat and slow. Even worse than I remembered. I almost can't believe it got broadcast.

Halfway through episode two now and I think that's all I can take.

[Mr Trumpet]

The main issue with the show is it's all bite and no, er, trousers. For all it's bile it never manages to hang together and none of the episodes are particularly well plotted, paced or directed - perhaps because it was brand new territory for Morris and Brooker. The constant compound phrases seemed very sub-Brass Eye and lazy even at the time. "Well Jackson" "Keep it foolish" "Totally Mexico" etc are hardly up there with, say, Roboplegic Wrongcock. You could make the argument Nathan hasn't the wit to come up with anything better but it doesn't really matter in the end, they're still banal, lumpen things to listen to in every episode. "Geek Pie" for fuck's sake. "SugaRape." None of it really lands. None of the actors really seem to know how to deliver the lines either, with only Barrett being consistently decent.

That said, I do find it a strangely fascinating watch with OK nuggets here and there... it's just a missed opportunity overall.

But you've got to admit Dajve Bikinus is a classic Brass Eye-esque name

[The Mollusk]

The constant compound phrases seemed very sub-Brass Eye and lazy even at the time. "Well Jackson" "Keep it foolish" "Totally Mexico" etc are hardly up there with, say, Roboplegic Wrongcock. You could make the argument Nathan hasn't the wit to come up with anything better but it doesn't really matter in the end, they're still banal, lumpen things to listen to in every episode.

I think more broadly speaking the slang is intentionally shit and unimaginative to reflect the mindset of every character being sort of stupid. Even Claire's not very good documentary has the cringeworthy title "London Undone and Done In". Obviously as you said if that serves to detract from your enjoyment of the show then that could be considered a failing of the writers, but for me the utter stupidity of the way these people speak adds to the building of a world where you're constantly left feeling like an outsider but also seeing enough from the outside to know how facile, try-hard and ultimately off-putting it is. Again, it feels like a deliberately polarising effort from a show which, coupled with its washed out and desaturated visual style and obnoxious headache soundtrack, actively invites you to dislike it. I might even go further and suggest that the issues of episode/story structure and pacing are also intentionally messy but that's where I start thinking that the show was over-indulgent and wondering what the point of it even was. Maybe that's the point aahhh

I have an oddly specific memory of a comment in the original thread when it aired saying it "isn't supposed to be quotable" which I agree with to some extent but I also am someone who thinks in an absurdly post-ironic fashion and doesn't take language seriously so I have quoted it a lot. My wife and I say "thoughts etc?" and variations of that ("dinner etc?") all the time.

[dungbeetle kpi]

15peter20 is a great name for a shitty artist.

[Petey Pate]

If the intention was to make Barley's catchphrases deliberately stupid and 'unquotable', it definitely backfired to some extent. I've even seen people play 'cock, muff, bum hole' in real life after they watched the first episode.

The most pertinent line of the series is Jonathan Yeah! saying 'stupid people think it's cool, smart people think it's a joke, also cool' - which definitely applies to the show itself as much as anything.