The Creators of Nathan Barley

Finally: We have the first sustained critique of youth culture's devolution into Kevlar post-irony, and (bonus!) we get it as hilarious British sitcom.

Nathan Barley follows its titular character — a twenty-something DJ, guerilla filmmaker and doltishly exuberant clothes pony — as he ruins the life of his involuntary mentor, Dan Ashcroft. Ashcroft has just published a screaming jeremiad in an urban lifestyle magazine eviscerating exactly the kind of dense narcissists — like Barley —who almost immediately begin lauding him as a genius.

Currently available from UK-based web-vendors on a universally compliant Region 0 DVD, it's already been on DVD in Britain for years. It also evidently wasn't considered that hilarious in Britain, where the show garnered only 5 percent of the available viewers for Channel 4's Friday night time slot. However, as the Sunday Times noted, Barley "more than made up for disappointing ratings with its disproportionate social impact," having by series' end "garnered more column inches than the return of Doctor Who." Why, you may ask, would Channel 4 consciously choose to broadcast this show at an hour when its target audience was getting dressed to go out? How could this have happened to a series that lists co-creator of The Office Stephen Merchant and Borat writer Peter Baynham as script consultants?

The short, paranoid answer is that the style mags tried to kill it. The series was panned by a former Sleazenation editor in the Times of London and Vice magazine's ur-ambiguous capsule review reads like it was written by a scared high school bully. (In two sentences it goes from calling the show "fucking funny," to saying a writer for the show "never gets laid.")

And frankly, they have cause for concern. Series creators Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris — respectively a media critic for the Guardian and a comedy writer routinely described in the British press as "sick" and "a genius" — have together set the new standard for satires of the art-damaged, radical chic set. Where Gawker's "Blue States Lose" and Robert Lanham's The Hipster Handbook have provided merely a derisive taxonomy, Nathan Barley models ecosystems, entire lifecycles of viral aesthetic trends. (Sample: Nathan's degrading prank videos are described as "Swift meets Jackass" by a young television executive who thinks Nathan is kidding when he replies, "Yeah! Only even faster.")

First covered in Flak by Scott Martinez, Nathan Barely is now likely to have a much belated second season. Below is the complete transcript of independent email interviews with series creators Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker about all of that. Originally conducted for a feature piece in Anthem (a "progressive culture" magazine completely not comparable to those parodied in Barley), the majority of the interview is improbably wonky and not intended for British comedy novices — which is probably why it's appearing here and not in a glossy bimonthly with Cillian Murphy and Daft Punk gracing its limited-edition alternate covers. You're welcome, Internet!

Flak Magazine: The two of you had spent several years trying to get Nathan Barley made into a series. What were some of the contributing factors that made it difficult to get the show broadcast?

Chris Morris: Making it was the main obstacle. You can't drive a car made out of drawings.

Flak: How did you approach Office co-creator Stephen Merchant to be a script consultant for the show? Can you recall any specific contributions he made to either the plot or dialogue in Nathan Barley?

CM: From ground level Steve's head looks very small, but actually it's the size of a shoe or television. He uses most of it to process data, which he does. He interrogated the scripts with enthusiasm and forensic scrutiny, made many useful suggestions, at least one of which was that episode 1 was too full (it originally contained the Preacher Man plotline), and that we should consider writing an episode 0. He was sometimes appalled at the stage directions.

Flak: These questions could also be repeated for Peter Baynham, who — as I understand it — just recently did some writing for that Borat movie.

CM: Peter Baynham provided insights which were as much a product of his mind as his brain. He wanted to know if Dan was an idiot and this prompted us to write the Dan/Weekend on Sunday interview scene (begins 0:38 of 6:54). Baynham is always funny, often brilliant and talks as if sticking to the point is pure evil. He received an Oscar nomination for totally writing Borat so your understanding is good.

Flak: Both of you pointed out in an interview that a key to the humor in the original TV Go Home capsule reviews was the exaggerated (and perhaps occasionally even unconsciously jealous) fury leveled at Nathan Barley. To what degree was the creation of Dan Ashcroft as a character born out of trying to preserve that aspect of the humor? Did personifying that rage lead the show into darker territory than expected?

CM: You can't really translate that aspect of the original columns so, brilliant as they are, we had to do without them.

Charlie Brooker: In some ways, Dan is Nathan in about seven years time. I think he did originally pop up as an idea during conversations about who the "angry observer" in the TVGH listings might be (as did Claire) — the angry narrator in the listings is clearly a hugely frustrated and confused sod, which I think was roughly the origin there. But the principal characters weren't cast in stone prior to casting — there was a long period of working with the cast and tweaking and bending the characters around their individual strengths and quirks. They changed quite a lot from the original basic starting points.

Flak: How much enthusiasm was there on set over the fact that this series was poking fun at a segment of the population whose sardonic self-posturing has traditionally served to elevate them from criticism? Was there much heady excitement over the concept of satirizing a group of people that consider themselves the world's premier arch-ironists?

CM: None. It's the only way to work.

Flak: Was there difficulty in getting Channel Four to agree to Region 0 encoding for the DVD? Did they have piracy concerns or was there a general understanding that this series would benefit from some kind of (ugh) global, interweb word-of-mouth?

CM: There may have been a stifled bleat.

Flak: Signing on Julian Barratt as Dan Ashcroft and Noel Fielding as his roommate, Jones, seemed like an impeccable bit of stunt casting given their comedic aesthetic.

How aware of their work were you prior to writing the series? Were the parts written with them in mind?

CM: Dan Ashcroft was written before we cast Julian but once he was in, he was all over it — for example, literally asking questions. Julian can produce a laugh with miniscule shifts in his trigonometry. Once someone is cast, you write towards their abilities, not away from them. Noel did a brilliant audition in which he claimed he'd been discovered in Borneo looking "like a frog in a puffer jacket."

Flak: In any event, are either of you weirded out by the fact that Ophelia Lovibond, the actress who played Mandy (go to minute 1:00 of 8:08), appeared in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist almost immediately after working on Nathan Barley?

CM: No. But I was totally weirded out that Polanski raped her.

Questions For Charlie Brooker

Flak: Can you take me through the logic of doing the first Cunt synopsis at TV Go Home, then deciding to make it a regular feature, then deciding to make Nathan Barley a TV series? Does anyone own the rights to Condorman Fucks Up?

CB: The first listings were really just me yelping about a certain type of bell-end I suddenly found myself trying to avoid on a regular basis. At the time I lived in an area of London that was becoming increasingly gentrified — the local pubs (which had been grotty and uninviting and which I never dared venture into anyway) were being transformed into rather po-faced wooden-floored gastrobars permanently surrounded by a throng of bellowing duffers, who'd stand outside blocking the pavement, drinking and guffawing and talking at maximum volume about screenplays they weren't working on. If I'm honest, I think it was general resentment tinged with class envy on my part: I thought I had to work for a living and they didn't. Their lives seemed more fun than mine. And everything they said was loud and stupid. Wahhh, it wasn't fair. Re-reading the very first Barley listings, it's really just me getting annoyed at the very notion of upper-middle-class kids slumming it.

Anyway, when I wrote the first one, I figured no-one would know or likely care what I was banging on about. Turned out they did, or felt they did. Later, Cunt expanded to cover virtually any stripe of modern poseur I could think of. But really, the main joke was always the insane degree of anger blasted in Barley's direction. It'd still be quite funny if it was being hurled at a blameless postman or a friendly baker — although lobbing it at an imaginary cocksure twat WAS satisfying.

For the TV series, we effectively had to create a new Nathan from scratch — I mean, we knew he'd wear fashionable shoes, but he wasn't much of a character in the listings, rather a sort of identikit berk, put in the stocks and spat at. There were lots of different ways you could "do" the listings Nathan — you could easily turn him into a detached Patrick Bateman type for instance — but the wide-eyed, barging, try-too-hard, insecure-but-over-pleased arsehead was the funniest way to go.

Condorman Fucks Up would make a good film. So would Drunk Batman.

Flak: Unsurprisingly, I'm extremely perplexed by Vice magazine's review of Nathan Barley, which I've included below for your edification:

Nathan Barley

Channel 4

Anybody who's a target of this show either pretends they haven't seen it or they think it's boring. Truth is, it's fucking funny. There's even a nod to Vice on here, which is not surprising because we're Charlie Booker's [sic] favourite magazine. When he's not propping his half-formed "extreme VIZ" shtick up with Chris Morris' genius he sits on the bog crying and wanking off at how much funnier/popular we are than him, the fucking miserable cunt who never gets laid.

DAN ASHCROFT

CB: That "extreme Viz" line is probably quite accurate, in that the TVGH site as a whole was definitely heavily influenced by the early tabloid spoofs in Viz comic. As for Vice, we looked at some copies of Vice when developing Nathan and co, and despite expecting to hate it, I found bits of it hilarious. (Intentionally, I mean: some of the writing had a gleefully obnoxious, Jackassy quality to it). Incidentally, the SugarApe "Vice" issue from Ep5 wasn't an assault on Vice magazine — I think it just (understandably) ended up looking that way. As for their review — I can't tell — it's a sort of handshake-and-headbutt — but I'll assume it's positive, just for the hell of it.

Questions For Chris Morris

Flak: Nicholas Burns said in an interview that you dispatched him to parties and events specifically to meet people that you considered to be "a bit of a Nathan Barley." He also stated that some of these appeared later in the show. Do any come to mind?

CM: What we ended up using was Nick's Nathan-filtered versions of types of behavior. At a particularly cooooool event, someone dressed as a cowboy asked him for a light. When Nick offered him his lighter, the cowboy held up his already lit cigarette and noted triumphantly "I've already got one" as if that was about the coolest thing since Elvis.... and that smirk of idiotic self satisfaction is what you see on Nick's face when he says "I dunno" at the end of program one, part one.

Flak: In 2002, you were widely rumored to be behind a cleverly edited video of President Bush's War on Afghanistan speech and the now-defunct website, Smokehammer.com, on which it appeared. Considering that this is close enough to the kind of activity lampooned on Nathan Barley, how conscious were you that the show would be perceived as a dig at (admittedly) a dimwitted radical-chic portion of your fan base? How does it feel that both you and someone like Bansky have been described as "media terrorists" in the press? Did you actively pursue this project as a means of disassociating yourself from these specific satirical techniques?

CM: No no no no no.

Flak: News from your talk at Bournemouth University has been that Nathan Barley 2 will feature "a different set of characters," and explore "different situations than before." Will there be any continuity between the two series?

CM: Yup.

Flak: Can you provide even the slightest hint as to what fans might expect to see?

CM: Nathan's brother, Jason.

Flak: Can you disclose the projected airdate? Is shooting going on right now?

CM: No projected airdate yet, but it won't be before 2008. Shooting won't happen 'til we've completed the scripts — and we're working on those around more immediate projects.

Flak: Off the record: Is their any truth to the rumors about Channel 4's head of entertainment Andrew Newman feeling that the "Ivan Plapp" character hit a little too close to home? Did it affect the green-lighting of the second season at all? I promise I will not mention either of you as the source — not even obliquely.

CM: These are excellent rumors, but Andrew Newman is a closet masochist.