Okay, I'm Alan Partridge...best series ever............The Day Today....funny, funny..............Brasseye....biting humour, funny.............Jam... seriously weird and disturbing but good nonetheless.
Nathan Barley...........was CM having an off day when he wrote this?
What am I missing?....
Hmm...Generally the people who don't get it are the people that CM is taking the P*ss out of. Please don't say you see yourself as a self facilitating media node!!!
shareThe thing is everybody hated it when it first started, I thought I was the only one laughing but it was held up as 'criminally underrated' when it was repeated, whixh goes to show that Chris Morris was (and is) light years ahead. People who didn't get it probably love My Family, or worse still Little Britain.
Nathan Barley and The Mighty Boosh where the funniest things on telly last year. Plus I hope The IT Crowd is good.
Is anybody who claims to enjoy this programme capable of defending it without resorting to 'you don't get it' or 'you probably like My Family'-type arguments?
shareFair comment thurstonlowe, it is too easy to kop-out with the my family argument (it's popularity still mystifies me though - maybe when I'm head of a suburban middle-class family I'll find some laughs,) there are alot of people in my life who are like the characters in Nathan Barley so I can relate, plus there is another level with the magazine and the website (being a designer - I think the over-designed phone is a hoot!) then again Paul Daniels says I need my head examining for finding Brasseye funny.
shareI think I love it because I can really relate to the Dan charater (I AM surrounded by idiots lol) and really hate Barley-types - so it's great to see a show taking the piss out of them so well!
Plus I really enjoy it on a visual level - so many great design details - oh yes, and it made me laugh - yes I think that is why I enjoy it the most . . .
The reason I really enjoy this program is because I know a lot of people that are quite like Nathan Barley. I would even go so far to say that some of them are my friends, this is because they may be total w*nkers but they mean well, much like the character of Nathan Barley.
These "friends" of mine often irritate the hell out of me but because I'm a nice person I don't have a go at them for thinking that they are the coolest thing in the world. When they go into a designer shop and buy something hidious because the cheeky cockney sales person says it's "well bum" and then pay rediculous somes of money for it, I say it looks nice and then laugh about it later.
My point is that Nathan Barley is a way for me to exercise my demons, i find it funny because I know people like this, but i don't want to ridicule them, well at least not to their faces...not because i'm scared of them (secret office reference).
I don't know if this is why other people find it funny, if i didn't actually know people like this I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. Anyway, I just wanted to put across why I personally find it funny. If you don't find it funny I can totally relate to that, a lot of my uni friends don't find it funny either, but then again they don't know anyone who Nathan Barley reminds them of.
'What we are dealing with here, is a complete lack of respect for the law'
I hardly think the 'my family' and 'little britain' arguments are good. I love Nathan Barley, Mighty Boosh, etc... and i also like my family and little britain.
Don't Drop the Wood! It's part of my name!
I just watched the whole series on DVD, and I agree with the posters who say that recognition is a big part of what makes Nathan Barley funny (or not funny). Rather than being the 'self-facilitising media nodes' who won't laugh at this because it sends them up, it's the people who've never met a self-facilitising media node and wondered what the hell it is they actually do all day who won't be amused.
Personally, I loved the terrifyingly modish hairdressers scalled Stanley Knives. I think this is a nod to a place called Tommy Guns where I used to get my hair cut when I worked in Old Street, even though I found the whole process slightly intimidating, and was always relieved when my hair was still more-or-less symmetrical afterwards. Well weapon.
Great post.
I'm not sure that I'd defend NB as being consistently side-splitting or Morris's best work but its razor-sharp accuracy makes it far better than 'The Office' or other shows of the same ilk.
If you were picking a target to satirise you'd need to have a lot of balls to go for Barley and the SugarApe guys, whereas Brent and Gareth ...
"We've entered as strangers, soon we have friends"
For gods sake people! You dont need to be affiliated with the media gits to enjoy or hate this comedy! I am as far removed from this type of stereotypical crap than I can be and I LOVE IT!!!! It is hilarious! I love all Morris comedy as much as I adore The Boosh and Garth Merenghi! It is pointless, meaningless drivel with many a laugh and many a tear shed in sympathy! Get over yourselves! 'I dont get it', 'what am I missing'...blah blah blah, I think the same about Little Britian, My Family etc etc. It just takes different people, different perspectives, different lives. Why does everyone on imdb feel the need jump on a bandwagon of some sort, saying I hate this, I hate that, stating it as an opinion! Woop de doo! Fantastico! You dont like it! Dont ask us why not!!!!!!!!!! Ask yourself, your lifestyle, your upbringing, your whole perspective on life!!! I dont like Little Britain because it reeks of conformity, of stereotypical working class-isms, catchphrases galore! Sure Nathan Barley has some of this but it means so much more......
KEEP IT JACKSON!
Cripes! I only asked a simple question. Who rattled your cage?!
shareThe point a lot of people seem to be missing about Nathan Barley is its not just about saying "I know guys just like the Idiots". There's more to this than just laughing at Shoreditch "meeja" types.
Morris is having a bit of a cheeky postmodern dig at some of his own fans. The big joke is WE ARE THE IDIOTS!
As someone who is seen as cool and controversial Chris Morris would be a God to the Idiots in the same way that Dan Ashcroft is. He's able to mercilessly slate them, yet they still love him. Just as the characters in the series are completely unaware that they are the targets of Ashcroft's vitriolic writings, we are unaware that we are the Idiots that Morris is laughing at with his series.
You can see this in the way he has tried to make the series look as cool and fashionable as possible. This is to attract a lot of people/idiots who just want to watch the next "in" thing. These viewer's then dont realise that they are the butt of the jokes they are laughing at.
The magazine "SugaRAPE" is a mickey take of Morris's contemporaries. The name shows the Idiots mindlessly cashing in on the kind of controversy Morris himself has courted with his Brass Eye special. Yet, unlike Morris, they have no point to make other than to shock people and look cool.
Jonathan Yeah? puts it best when he says something along the lines of "Stupid people wont understand it but they'll think its cool and will love it. Clever people will think its a joke and so will also love it". He was talking about his magazine, but when writing this Chris Morris was meaning his TV series.
Personally i enjoyed the series, although I preferred The Day Today. I realised after the second episode of Barley that maybe I was one of the Idiots for watching it, but what the hell. If we can't recognise that there are elements of the Idiots in us then we are just as deluded as they are.
Or am I just thinking about this too much?
"Morris is having a bit of a cheeky postmodern dig at some of his own fans. The big joke is WE ARE THE IDIOTS!"
Hey, you read it like me!
the clincher is in that party with the so say brother nathan bit.
"You're all idiots"
"yeah, tell it like it is chris.. er I mean preacher man!"
"time to wake up, pretty girl" - the cowboy, mulholland drive
I came to the same conclusion superted57, but the characters were so replusive I couldn't watch the whole series at the time. I regret not taping it - in fact I did record a few but taped over them as I didn't think it would still be making me think for so long after. If nothing else its very memorable the same way Brass Eye etc is for it's unique full on approach.
I don't actually know any media-types but I recognised the side-swiping at the stereotyipicals and I found them so awful they got in the way of the writing which at times was fast and furious and too much to digest easily.
However on reflection, I'm looking forward to it being repeated or watching it on DVD whenever I can be bothered. It's not life-changing as much as it's life-affirming that I'm not a trendy tw@t with no taste.
Back to the gentle horseplay of The IT Crowd for me for the time being. ;-)
I don't get it either. People who don't get it aren't fans of slapstick humour and fart jokes, or the people - whoever they are - that are being satired. They're just fans of good comedy that everybody can laugh at. It's not hard making jokes about a niche group only six people will get, me and my friends make jokes about each other all the time. True comedy lies in a simple, relatively mass appealing idea. Well, the intelligent masses anyway. Not pretensious fools who like Nathan Barley.
shareBut then I do get it, so I must be pretentious too. If your "true comedy" has to be validated by mass popularity then good luck to you. To me, the only true comedy is what makes me laugh, regardless of what others think. Barley has the specific recognition factor for anyone who has walked around London lately and paid attention - like the Heath cartoons in Private Eye, it's excrutatingly observational and will date instantly - but the overall theme of fashion-victimhood will remain timeless.
For me the ultimate proof of Chris Morris' ballsy approach was the plot about Nathan and what he thought was a 13-year old coke whore. On so many levels that could have been so offensive, and yet Nathan's complete moral cluelessness left me gasping for breath as a I laughed my ass off. In these days of sanctimonious offence takers, particularly given Chris' previous brush with the Morality Police over paedophile-related humour, it was good to see he hadn't lost his nerve, and it was spectacularly successful.
If you don't get it, then fine. But why be so hostile to those who do? It's not a personality test.
Can i just add my thoughts to this,
I get that its taking the piiss out of people whether trendy hoxton types or people who revere morris, i understand your arguements that the people who dont find it funny are either the ones being lampooned or like 'comedy' like my family but i must say that i realise all of these things, i am not a trendy media type but i know some. I just think the series wasn't that well executed. I thought it was badly written and poor on laughs. Also wasnt it in fashion to take the pish out of shoreditch 5 years ago
Based on a magazine called "Shoreditch Tw@t" - says it all really.
shareSo far as I know, CM didn't write "I'm Alan Partridge". I think Armando Ianucci produced, in part, all the shows, tho, altho perhaps not Nathan Barley.
"Find out what to think next!"
-Chris Morris, "Brasseye"
He shouldn't bite the hand that feeds. The Chris Morris bubble burst with Nathan Barley.
Iannucci has never put a foot wrong though.
"...and remember, The Queen Mother died listening to Osymyso."
I mean is it even possible for people who have taken the time to watch the series all the way through, and come to the evaluation that they didn't actually enjoy the series? It seems that everybody who happens to disagree with people who enjoyed Nathan Barley that the critics are infact Nathan Barley's themselves.
Please, get over your complex in trying to state that your comedy is better than others. So you like the surrealism of Nathan Barley and even the higher plane of Jam. Personally i like my comedy a little more down to earth, and more comfortable to an extent. I like "Friends, Frasier, Seinfield". Although i also adore Brass Eye, The Day Today, Green Wing, On The Hour". I didn't like Jam and I didn't like Nathan Barley, but personally i don't see how my taste in comedy can really reflect my personality to a great extent. Please remove any stereotypical idealogy you have when it comes to discussing Nathan Barley at least!
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a case of the emporer's new brain. can you really tell if your part of the problem or part of the solution?
shareNo one can deny the show is incredibly well done and swimming with details.
I do feel Morris is a sanctimonious twerp though, a little bit, just by getting caught in this whole "I'm better than everyone else oh wait no I'm not oh wait yes I am" cycle, like some rock star who starts writing songs about being a rock star. There's a new Jonathan Swift in Britain every five years and Morris had better get off this kick before he ends up like Will Self. Self was the satirical novelist par excellence in the 90's and then ended up as a part of 15Peter20-style art exhibits where he would write books in a glass cage in a museum while attendees looked on. Then he was writing for Weekend on Sunday magazines, one of which I recall reading on a plane where he described his vacations in the south of France.
Morris could easily become what he hates the most, if he hasn't already. He clearly loves money, technology and ( one suspects, due to his obsession with the theme ) young girls, just like his characters. From what I understand he's now acting in a dopey Office clone called The IT Crowd so maybe he has crossed the line, inevitably, just like all know-it-all smart-bottoms like Trey Parker.
Here's an analogy. Barley:Ashcroft :: Coogan:Morris. Steve Coogan comes off like a simpleton but actually he is a holy fool like Barley. You can tell he genuinely loves people and tries to draw out their good sides when playing a character, to show the inner beauty beneath the cliched facade. Morris on the other hand sets up people like dominoes, only to knock them down, and then make himself and his audience feel smart. The character of Ashcroft is a nice attempt at a mea culpa but like I said, he's way too caught up in himself.
Interesting point. unfortunately i think that the comedy is based more upon charlie brooker's personal experiences than chris morris's. i believe the ashcroft character is almost certainly a proxy for brooker who spent much of his career as a writer for magazines like sugar ape, and most likely working with nathan barley types. the character orginally evolved from brooker's tv listing satire tv go home (from a programme that was just simply titled *beep*
i disagree with your point about barley being a holy fool. anyone who watched the series and saw the numerous repulsive things that he did couldn't really argue that he wasn't anything other than an awful, self-serving, vacuous little *beep* but then that's the point really.
personally i thought the show was very funny. i urge anyone who didn't find it funny the first time to give it another go. personally i don't need a programme to have particularly likeable characters for me to get into it. nothing against with nice people. but they don't have quite the same entertainment value.
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