Nathan Barley

[Mobius]

i like nathan barley, it's funny and has lots of funny moments in.

[Brundle-Fly]

One of the criticisms at the time was that the series was 'too late' largely because of the media targets in the series; for me, that wasn't the case. Now, it does look like it was prophetic - and the Guardian article considers this but there's been a *lot* of retrospective pieces as I say.

I think some of the criticisms in the media were probably made by hipstery types quietly aware that they might have been the very target of Brooker's/ Morris's derision. "Hey man, wearing pinstripe jackets with ironic rock band logos on the back and the Hoxton fin was sooo eighteen months ago."

[Ferris]

Fair point. Though I also think it's pretty reasonable to expect the person you're keen to hire to have something to say about something. I guess I took it the way I did because the only pieces we really see of his writing are polemical tirades and it gave the impression that he's just a cunt that shits on everything but doesn't really have anything else to say. It's pretty easy to just bitch and moan about pretty much anything. I guess I got the impression that Dan was a self-righteous pseudo-intellectual whose writing is pretty superficial all things considered, showing him to be just a sort of self-hating idiot. He ultimately shows himself to be unable to write for anyone else but the idiots and SugarApe is the only magazine that really wants to keep him at the end of the day.

No I think you're right, that's definitely the point of the scene I just think poor old Dan was hard done by there, but mainly mugged off by the writing that put him in that position.

It would have been better (according to me, but who the fuck am I?) if he was asked to put something together "on cheap booze", and he did some shit smug misguided surface-level nothing piece about boozing in the afternoon instead of the top 5 wines under a tenner or whatever the boss bloke wanted. You could even recycle his lines!

Or, maybe Claire takes a message from the magazine for him, writes down "write piece for mag - on cheap booze" on a note, and he misunderstands and does it about something unrelated while getting drunk on white cider or something. I don't know I'm not a writer.

[Stinky Lomax]

Fat arms.

??

[Mr Trumpet]

I like that sometimes Nathan is put on the back foot and gets nervous, and his voice goes all posh

[badaids]

??

It's one of Dan's insults to Claire, which I still use today.

[Cuellar]

I think it was/is funny yes.

[Better Midlands]

I recall one of the criticisms being that, unless you've spent time in certain parts of East London, you probably haven't really stumbled across the world it's satirising

I had spent the second half of the 90s amongst those East London sorts so thought it was a really good pastiche of where your Dazed & Confused/Brick Lane/Truman Brewery types were heading back then and very entertaining. I think I was only vaguely aware that Morris was involved and Brooker meant nothing to me at the time. I remember discovering CAB around the same period and it being hated - the vitriol put me off here for a while.

Different days though.

[Mobius]

quick game of cock muff bumhole, anyone?

[Ignatius_S]

In fairness to Dan, nobody told him it was an interview. They just kept saying "we want you to write for us!" and he finally agreed to go to their office.

If someone was begging me to work for them, I kept saying no, then I finally gave in and agreed to meet them I don't think I'd be expecting an interview either. I thought you wanted me to work for you, now you're asking me to pitch? You know what my stuff is and you like it enough to beg me to come in so what's going on here?

One of the executives is an old friend (I think from university) of Dan's and as he is the star writer of SugarApe, the impression is that it's a done deal.

However, for me, something key has been overlooked - and it's a very well-observed point in the scene about how established names will be hired to write about random rubbish or totally outside their expertise.

When Dan meets them, they explicitly say that they want him to bring that SugarApe ultra-hip coolness to their Sunday newspaper magazine supplement - but what do they want him to write about? Subjects such as motoring or wines. What could be cooler than that?

The way that Dan panics in the interview is also important - like the game he plays in the pub after previously disparaging it. With the latter, it's an early example of him drinking and what we learn later puts the scene into context. By the end of the series, it's been firmly established that Dan has a very serious alcohol problem. I would say there are indications that he's suffering depression and feel he comes across as vulnerable person; certainly that vulnerability is something really drew one of my friends into the series.

Dan is clever enough to recognise what's around him and is desperate to escape but is incapable of taking meaningful action. This is illustrated particularly in the way he manages his life and money. The interview scene is a glimpse of what we will find out.

There is obviously a contrast with Nathan. There are times when Nathan is mortified and has actual awareness of what is occurring, but always comes out smelling of roses and escape humiliation.

[Ignatius_S]

I think some of the criticisms in the media were probably made by hipstery types quietly aware that they might have been the very target of Brooker's/ Morris's derision. "Hey man, wearing pinstripe jackets with ironic rock band logos on the back and the Hoxton fin was sooo eighteen months ago."

That's absolutely the case. There were style mag people that were asked for their opinion in the media and remember one BBC article where a former editor of Face was asked to discuss it at length (or review it). By saying Brooker and Morris were several years too late was a way of trying to dismiss it; there were other ways that this was attempted but there was a strong element 'methinks the lady doth protest too much'.

There were observations (I was working in magazine journalism) that were heavily exaggerated but I could certainly see.

Also, I think a lot of these people were missing quite a lot of the point and making out it was only commenting on media types when it blatantly wasn't.

[Stinky Lomax]

It's one of Dan's insults to Claire, which I still use today.

I know it's a quote from the show, I was just hoping there was more to your post than insulting me for having a different opinion to you.

[Brundle-Fly]

I liked that story Brooker tells that a typical day of writing with Chris Morris would mostly be spent discussing what type of trousers Nathan would be wearing or the appropriate sampled eighties pop music would be playing at the club or what posters would be on the wall. He said CB was forensic when it came to the art department minutiae.

[ASFTSN]

It's good. It was prescient, but maybe accidentally. I do think a lot of the show themes come from mere surface level hatred at these types of people and their fashions and lack of any base to build their personalities on, but it could have gone further, and may even have hit too early. The idiots won, that way of thinking (if not dressing) became absorbed, then encouraged by the people in charge, and now post-modern insincerity and irony is now just base level humanity for the UK and the US, especially. It cuts across all generations since the internet became okay for normal people to use.

[badaids]

I know it's a quote from the show, I was just hoping there was more to your post than insulting me for having a different opinion to you.

Sorry Lomax I didn't mean it, I just like deploying that phrase and i dont get to that often.  It is I who is the Fat Arms.  You're allowed to like or
not like whatever you want.

[Matthew Dawkins Jub Jub]

I remember appreciating it when it came out, but I don't think I ever really laughed at it. I never got the impression it was a comedy I was supposed to find funny, per se. More that it's a rather blunt piece of dystopian observational humour, like an art installation you can go "oh!" and "ah!" at occasionally.

Or it's just proper fucking weapon, kicked her brown door in, painted it white on the way out.

[The Mollusk]

Often reminded of the bit where Dan is trying to get denied entry to the club

Dan: I'm a trouble maker, look. [slaps shades off the top of Toby's head]

Toby: (politely) That's no trouble.

Rhys Thomas does such a good job of a harmless dope not "cool" enough to keep up with Nathan's bullshit.

[Icehaven]

Fair point. Though I also think it's pretty reasonable to expect the person you're keen to hire to have something to say about something. I guess I took it the way I did because the only pieces we really see of his writing are polemical tirades and it gave the impression that he's just a cunt that shits on everything but doesn't really have anything else to say. It's pretty easy to just bitch and moan about pretty much anything. I guess I got the impression that Dan was a self-righteous pseudo-intellectual whose writing is pretty superficial all things considered, showing him to be just a sort of self-hating idiot. He ultimately shows himself to be unable to write for anyone else but the idiots and SugarApe is the only magazine that really wants to keep him at the end of the day.

This perfectly aligns with my assumption that Dan was basically Charlie Brooker writing about himself (at that point anyway) in a slightly alternate universe.

I liked Nathan Barley anyway and as others have said I don't think it was supposed to be a laugh-a-minute sitcom anyway so how funny it is isn't that important (unless it is to you.)

[ASFTSN]

This perfectly aligns with my assumption that Dan was basically Charlie Brooker writing about himself (at that point anyway) in a slightly alternate universe.

It's absolutely the case. See also Black Mirror episode Fifteen Million Merits surely.

[Fambo Number Mive]

quick game of cock muff bumhole, anyone?

I presume it works like scissors paper stone?

[The Crumb]

I find it weirdly compelling but I'm not sure how much I really like it. Feels a bit like a heap of weirdly intense and lurid details without much of an overall point.

It seems like a quite hostile and misanthropic satire directed at pretty inconsequential targets. I can't really get that caught up in the seething disdain at some twentysomethings doing and saying stupid shit they'll probably grow out of.

[wrec]

I found it a bit silly and over the top when it was broadcast but rewatching it later (probably when I bought the DVD, and I must have already liked it enough to do so) I enjoyed it way more, and it seemed like a bang-on satire of media and youth culture at the time.

I don't think it's nihilistic or cynical, and Morris made the point in interviews that anyone getting too worked up about characters like Nathan had a problem.

I need to rewatch it but I suspect it would hit different (as the kidz say) now, being old enough that the present day equivalents of those characters seem mildly irritating or endearingly sure of themselves, rather than wreckers of civilization.

It'll be 20 years old in six months!

[wrec]

It seems like a quite hostile and misanthropic satire directed at pretty inconsequential targets. I can't really get that caught up in the seething disdain at some twentysomethings doing and saying stupid shit they'll probably grow out of.

Crosspost, but Morris was adamant (I'm sure someone will dig up the quote!) that they were indeed inconsequential targets that didn't deserve seething disdain. Whether that comes across in the series is another matter.

[Stinky Lomax]

Sorry Lomax I didn't mean it, I just like deploying that phrase and i dont get to that often.  It is I who is the Fat Arms.  You're allowed to like or not like whatever you want.

No worries, thanks :)

[The Mollusk]

The show was totally aware of its own futility, and did a good job of basically saying these cunts are unstoppable and there's no way of escaping this media becoming the norm, so much so that even ordinary people will end up sucked into their world just to carve a decent looking career path out of whatever the future will be.

There's varying degrees of hopelessness in the apparent "good" characters, like Dan who's more like them than he wants to admit, Toby who desperately wants to be cool, the SugarApe front desk woman (forget her name) who seems wearily apathetic about it all, and Pingu who's vastly more talented than them and really deserves better.

It is a nihilistic show because it can't be shown to have any sort of victory for any of those characters. It's a no-win situation. The main reason it's funny is because it's peppered with so many absurd Morrisisms which keep it just about bearable.

I really liked it when it was first broadcast and I still like it now, though of course it has aged a bit.

[The Crumb]

Crosspost, but Morris was adamant (I'm sure someone will dig up the quote!) that they were indeed inconsequential targets that didn't deserve seething disdain. Whether that comes across in the series is another matter.

I can see this to an extent, and I wonder how much of Morris' vision vs how much of Brooker's the show ended up being. But as you say, I'm not sure that thinking from Morris comes across fully in the final series - it's a bit like someone going on a 3 hour rant while repeatedly telling you they're not really bothered.

[majava]

A few years back as I was making digital copies of all my DVDs I found that the Nathan Barley DVD-ROM contains a number of images which, stripped of context, would look fairly suspect.

[wobinidan]

Nathan Barley is actually my first experience of this website. I googled it to see what people were saying about it because I liked it.

I remember everyone absolutely hating it and someone doing a big rant about how having a big number 5 on your phone because it's the most used number is NOT funny. It was like Star Wars fans raging against The Phantom Menace. Not very dignified.

I don't really understand why it prompted such vitriol when people here will happily watch Ricky Gervais comedies and casually comment on them. I think NB was quite an unpleasant watch but it was designed that way, and it succeeded and I would defend it if that had any purpose whatsoever but it doesn't. But I think it's good.

[Thosworth]

I worked in Hoxton Square in the mid-90s and I think seething disdain is pretty accurate, but as often happens with similar hate figures/celebrities etc, over time you do come to realise they were indeed just a bunch of inconsequential twats. I wonder if Morris' comments were contemporaneous or retrospective.

I do need to rewatch, I can't remember a lot of it. Mainly that Dan trying to escape felt like the leads in City of God attempting, but through inescapable circumstance being unable to ever leave the favela.

[Barry Admin]

I don't really understand why it prompted such vitriol when people here will happily watch Ricky Gervais comedies and casually comment on them. I think NB was quite an unpleasant watch but it was designed that way, and it succeeded and I would defend it if that had any purpose whatsoever but it doesn't. But I think it's good.

You expect Ricky Gervais shows to be shit.

You don't expect to have to go "well it doesn't matter if it's not that funny anyway, it probably isn't trying to be" with a Chris Morris programme.