The three of us
Two dads, one mum – one family
By
Charlie Condou
The Guardian, Saturday
18 February 2012
[…Hal was discharged from intensive
care and sent to the main ward with Catherine…The cast and crew at Corrie have
been amazing too. Really supportive throughout our drama and reworking my
schedule where possible…Georgia had been staying at our place while her mum was
in hospital and, though she had been in to visit Catherine, she hadn't yet met
her new brother…Mummy, Daddy, Wawa (Georgia's name for Cam) and Georgia, tiptoed
up the stairs to meet baby Hal all together…Visitors to the house are told that
his name is "Nibby". I don't know where Georgia dreamed it up from
but I can see that it's already starting to stick. We're all calling him Nibby
now, poor little bugger…]
Above is a set of edited moments from
the complete Charlie Condou article. If you would like to read his column in
full click HERE
Broadcast by Channel 4 in 2005 the eponymous star of Nathan Barley, played by Nicholas Burns, was a webmaster, guerilla film-maker, club promoter, fashion guru, "self-facilitating media node" and a prime example of what was known at the time as a "Shoreditch twat". Surrounded by similarly deluded fools, only one man was capable of seeing through the facade – journalist Dan Ashcroft (Julian Barratt), whose Rise Of The Idiots column in Sugar Ape magazine is proclaimed as genius by the very people it ridicules.
There was only one series, broadcast seven years ago – but Nathan Barley is still used as shorthand for describing someone who is a bit of a trendy prat. Last week QPR midfielder Joey Barton (he of the Nietzsche and Morrissey-quoting Twitter feed) was labelled a "footballing Nathan Barley" after he purchased a Banksy at a charity auction. Previously BBC controller Danny Cohen has been mocked for his Nathan Barley-alike buzzwords such as "continuous beta". Meanwhile our obsession with smartphones, computer tablets, social networking and pompously named coffee has turned us all "well Barley" and ignorant to Dan Ashcroft's barbs. The nation's youth continue to wear their waistbands "beneath their balls" while they "babble into handheld twit machines". Unlike our trousers the idiots haven't only risen they've taken control.
Nathan Barley arrived as a spin off from Charlie Brooker's turn-of-the-millennium Radio Times website parody TV Go Home, in which the trustafarian Barley was the main character of a fictitious fly on the wall documentary called Cunt. Brooker co-wrote the series with Chris Morris and over six episodes ridiculed the pretentiousness of the new media era and the lotus-eating, coke-snorting lifestyle of Britain's style magazines.
At the time the show received some criticism for parodying a society that had already passed – the dotcom bubble had burst and the days of internet companies spending millions sending their staff on skiing holidays was over. But in many ways it was ahead of the times – today, in the Facebook age, we're used to people talking about themselves as if they were brands but Barley's internet self-promotion was in its infancy in 2005. It also pre-dated YouTube which has subsequently filled with the Jackass-style clips Barley uploaded to trashbat.co.ck. Ridiculous as it may seem nobody had taken the piss out of this stuff before.
Despite such period subject matter Barley isn't quite the museum piece you'd imagine. As with Brooker and Morris's other TV work, the humour is often double edged enough to make you question whether you should actually be laughing at all – especially the Vice episode which among other things finds Ashcroft partaking in straight-on-straight gay sex in a family pub and Barley paying for a blow job from an underage drug addict. This cringey discomfort didn't help it gain many viewers in 2005 when it was overshadowed by acclaim for The Green Wing, but it rewards repeat DVD viewing now.
Another thrill of returning to the show is the cast, which features not only a young Ben Whishaw as Barley's poor, tortured, tech-savvy boy-slave Pingu but also brief appearances by Benedict Cumberbatch – as suave and ageless then as he is today. There's also Coronation Street's Charlie Condou alongside soon to be comedy stars Richard Ayoade, Rhys Thomas and Barratt's Mighty Boosh partner Noel Fielding. Cumberbatch plays the accountant of washed up, eccentric rock star turned new media entrepreneur and new-age loon Doug Rocket. His post stardom projects include Email: The Musical which according to the poster in his offices starred Dannii Minogue, Roger Taylor and Ross Kemp as "Pixel". As with conceptual artist 15Peter20 – whose work centres around photographs of celebrities urinating – and TV commissioner Ivan Plapp, Brooker and Morris's thinly veiled celeb assassinations are often cited as one reason why there has never been a second series (although rumours persist – Morris teased fans in 2008 with the prospect of a series starring "Nathan's brother, Jason").
For now though these six episodes collected on DVD (alongside the pilot episode) are all we have – whether they are enough to sustain the characters cult appeal in decades to come is uncertain but for now watching this series is, in the words of its idiot hero "totally fucking Mexico".
DVD Description
The Nathan Barley DVD contains the complete six-part series broadcast in early 2005.
Special Features
Special features on the Nathan Barley DVD include: the original pilot episode; a 48-page booklet of Nathan Barley's "works"; deleted scenes; the option to view an entire episode re-dubbed with the wrong voices; newly recorded excerpts from Barley's internet radio show; extensive hi-res gallery of stills and programme graphics on DVD-Rom; the original tvgohome compilation; and hidden extras.
Synopsis
Episode 1: Baffled human wreck Dan Ashcroft (columnist on Sugar Ape) watches in horror as his world is over-run with 24-carat berks, led by a strutting, brainless c***-of-the-walk called Nathan Barley, who, distressingly, has designs on Dan's sister Claire.
Episode 2: Dan is canonised against his will, while Nathan throws a party for his rubbish website and oozes closer to Claire.
Episode 3: While Dan is plagued by a shrieking twit of a photographer called 15Peter20, Nathan grooms Claire with alcohol and an unsolicited breast massage.
Episode 4: Dan accidentally creates a new hairstyle by sleeping in paint, while Nathan needs a new look to impress glamorous TV-chick Dajve ('Dave') Bikinus. Something is killed.
Episode 5: Editor Jonatton Yeah? (Charlie Condou) wants Dan to take part in some straight-on-straight gay action and a coke-blasted model proves an irresistible lure for Nathan.
Episode 6: In the final episode, Nathan piggybacks his way into Claire's meeting with a TV commissioner, Pingu is broken like a rag doll, and Dan finally discovers a way to destroy Nathan.
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