Toby, ya fucker, how’s it collapsing?

I’ll just keep writing any old shit I guess. I just listen to the news about Gaza and know fucking loads about that, probably already said that. It would be stupid for me to write about that though, I don’t actually know any more than anyone else, I think half of the world is obsessed with it. Or maybe not, it really feels historical to me, and they’ll ask what I did. I donated 50 pounds, put a Palestine flag on my profile, and then deliberately didn’t post about it

Today I watched all 6 episodes of Nathan Barley. So let’s have one of these shitty essays about that? I thought you’d never ask

I don’t know if it’s worse if people read these or not. I may be repeating myself, my music and stuff gets very low views, so anyway. I will write a semi serious attempt at evaluating Nathan Barley from 2024, in my own fairly derivative style.

Execution

The first thing to say about it is that it is really well executed. I don’t know if they still do these since I don’t really watch telly at all except big HBO shows, but it always felt like a BBC thing even though BBC didn’t do Barley. There are only 6X25 minute episodes ever, I watched the whole thing in a morning and really wanted to see more. But it was so packed with jokes, there was kind of a narrative, but the fact that it was so short made everything so much better in a way, and comforting, it seems like a really big pop culture thing, and when you watch it it’s pretty much no fat.

Quick aside, that’s a major problem with everything. Of course Disney is the cartoon example where if a film actually isn’t bloated they turn it into a 10 hour series, a if cool ideas are in short supply. It’s artificial scarcity applied to the realm of the imagination, they really are bastards.

But as well as how short and compact it is, there is also just how well made it is. It’s Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker when they are still kind of angry and punky, and there is that subtle anger that is so British. Like they obviously were kind of hipsters, and the avatar character ‘Dan’ is of course a total loser who is constantly almost making it, but constantly self sabotaging. Pretty much everyone is likable, I could spend more time on it probably, like it follows a lot of story and comedy conventions and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had done a weird twist on a standard format script.

So is it relevant today? I actually just had a thought based on what I was listening to, it’s like a posh English version of Irvine Welsh, which is obviously impossible, but there is the same kind of much maligned Gen X nihilism, which is not for nothing.

The early 00s when it’s set is this very special time, I’m not exactly the first person to say it, but it is one of those weird blind spots, like ‘everyone’ tends to use the idea of decades to define culture, and then you find these inflection points in pop culture when decades come together. Very Nathan Barley treat everything as superficial. The early 50s they started playing white covers of blues music on the radio, then the 60s people stop wearing suits, 70s things get a bit more rough, 80s you have punks and post punks, and hip hop 90s electronic music and hiphop take over, I probably should edit that out, but I’ll leave it in.
These things all very openly represent the wider cultural and economic changes. If you think that American Baby Boomers are malign, you should probably be scared of the Chinese Baby Stoppers, China is the main power now and nearly everyone middle class and most of the working class from about 40 down to about 25 was an only child because of government policy, that’s going to be a mental culture what they are into. I should write about that shit lol
Anyway, there is this weird cultural vortex that Nathan Barley (the character) exists in, they don’t actually do anything. I love the aesthetic, it’s what I grew up with, I never lived in London, not even one of the shit parts, but I really chimed with that 00s empty culture so much, pixel art, post music, can I call it hyper post modernism? I bet someone did that in the 80s lol

If you read all this you are just as dumb as me. I want your criticism and feedback. I am so lonely

To just lean into the politics a bit more, this is stuff that I think of as I write. The big thing at the beginning of the 90s was the end of the USSR. This was meant to be some great end of the war moment, it also tied in with the anniversary of the end of WW2 in Europe, as a kid of course I loved the idea of no war. There was a concerted effort on the part of popular culture in the 1980s to make everyone realise how fucked up it was that everyone had enough bombs underground to end the world.

So, statement: the cultural void that the Nathan Barley satirical character represented was a result of the Fukyama neoliberal fiction of ‘The End of History’ and represented the zenith and the nadir of that culture. This was also the time of post September 11 and we really didn’t know much back then about what that was about.

I know, you are meant to write the conclusion before you start. I’m a radical thinker

I will recommend a few things to close out. These are at time of writing avaiable on YouTube to watch for free

Armando Ianucci Show
Brasseye
The Day Today
Time Trumpet
Big Train

I don’t live in ‘the west’ and don’t watch much television, but anyone who reads this will recognise loads of the characters from Nathan Barley show and can look at their other work, they do all seem to be mates and work together.