Nathan Barley DVD Review:

‘I'm a self-facilitating media node.’

Ur-hur, of course you are. The man that is the comic force of good known as Chris Morris and the acerbically funny Charlie ‘Screen Burn’ Brooker team up like some sort of heaven sent comedy tag team to lay waste to those poncy, arty, wanky Shoreditch types who think they’re icebox and whose haircuts are so achingly trendy they’ve probably been pre-ordered and sent back in time by the bastard love-child of Trevor Sorbie and Craig from BB5. Ugh.

Coming after Morris’ last, brilliantly surreal TV series Jam (you cannot argue with the comic genius of Robert Kilroy Silk running naked through a shopping centre and stopping to wank in front of images of himself on TV screens) this locks on it’s targets and unleashes the best kind of bullet - satire. Morris has made a name for himself as a truly subversive comic, never afraid to tread on a few egg shells. In fact, tread is somewhat of an understatement. This man rips the eggs from their packet, whacks them into the hemisphere with the right leg of Darcus Howe, and, once they’ve fallen to Earth, he puts on some heavy duty army surplus steel reinforced shit kickers and trounces the shells with the gleeful abandon of a child sent home from school early because of some freak artic weather conditions. A man who will only garner admiration and nods of approval at the mere mention of his name - to anybody - which includes your dotty aunt whose last comedic hero was George Formby…where’s me washboard? Such is his skill at upsetting and satirising our modern world he should be awarded a fucking Nobel Prize and a national holiday should be named in his honour. ‘Michael Grade is a C**t Day’ it should be called - I’d vouch for it.

Nathan Barley is no exception to Morris’s exemplary record for great satirical comedy. And with Charlie Brooker on board, the man who helped pen the Daily Mail-readership-offending Brass Eye paedophile special it certainly has the makings of comedy gold. Based on a character from Brooker’s TvGoHome, the series is sitcom-based and highlights the desperate lives of some trendy no-brainers who follow Nathan Barley’s opinions like he was urban coolness incarnate. This complete lack of intelligence and sheep-like mass behaviour in certain parts of the populace is the target of Brooker’s and Morris’s comedy. While we can only fester hatred and anger at Nathan and his croons, his polar opposite Dan Ashcroft (Julian Barrett from the excellent Mighty Boosh whose partner in crime Noel Fielding plays Jones) we can only empathise with as he hates them just as much as we do. The characters are so annoying and vapid that you can’t help but want to put a bullet in your brain (it certainly teaches a man how to hate). But as your finger rests nervously on the trigger, you remember this is a new sitcom by Morris and Brooker and its OKAY, you’re meant to feel this way. Probably done so as to annoy and antagonise us as we sit down to our Friday night comedy, thankful that it’s finally the weekend only to be confronted by a plethora of giant tossers on the TV. Nothings changed there then.

While the series isn’t as outrageously hilarious as Morris’s previous work, it’s still spot on stuff. They satirise these people with a sharp observant eye and it doesn’t stop there. Modern art and modern dance music get their own typically acid-soaked versions on the show. The characters are soulless and grotesque, the trendy photographer whose body of work consists of famous people urinating and the gamblers website where punters can bet on real live bare-knuckle fights between tramps all have that trademark Morris stamp of silliness tinged with the nightmarish fact that this could just as well be real. Just like after watching The Day Today where an entire nation was unable to watch Trevor MacDonald reading the evening news without howling like hyenas.

In the end, like all Morris’ work, he criticises us all. It laughs at the foolish Nathan Barley’s of this world, while also laughing at those who laugh at them. No one is exempt or safe from Morris’ satirical sword and we should thank the Lord God Almighty for people like him who remind us that we are all just a bunch of domesticated primates locked in an endless mirror-house of our own misinformed reality tunnels. He is a national treasure of incalculable value, whose valiant disregard for authority is admirable and whose rebellious spirit, bulldog wit and doberman intelligence was last seen in the likes of the late great Hunter S Thompson. A man to commend and champion in this media-hip, coco-shunting, corporate gang-bang of a world. Amen to that.

Extras (which are superb)

Original Pilot Episode
Deleted Scenes
An option to view an entire episode redubbed with the wrong voices
Newly recorded exerts from Barley’s internet radio show
Gallery of stills and programme graphics on DVD-Rom
Original TvGoHome Compilation
Hidden Extras



Kevin Holmes