Nathan Barley comes to TV

TVGH is funny because it relies on your imagination the TV series sucked, Cunt was funny because of the "the Kilroy team would like to hear from you" bits.

Would he get the financial backing with his record of self-sabotage ("Grade is a...") and tabloid-baiting? Perhaps he would - My Wrongs wasn't cheap. I don't really know whether he's capable of developing a feature on his own. Perhaps he could team up with Richard Curtis - Hugh Grant and Mark Heap both fall in love with the same American movie star, but she has the body of a Hoover and they're wheelchair-bound mesogleal tripeds who can only communicate in supra-aural square waves. Features Rowan Atkinson as a funny vicar (who burns penguins).

Still, nothing.

at first i thought that it was an invented Chris Morris character.

http://www.trashbat.co.ck/images/barley/gallery/large_covers/bkg_eph_4_large.jpg

which bit?

Dean Lerner and the bloke from Boosh bodes well. looked all a bit like that soap set in a web design office. can't remember the name now...

the very first tv trailer was based on manic miner loading screen. = good.

"They don't realise it's not good cos it's rude, yeah?"
"Yeah, it's good because it looks like it's good because it's rude." (the lazy-gobbed questioning-intonation is a bonus)

I had to install QT* to watch that again, which meant I had to install iTunes. I'm LIVING IN THE FUTURE.

(Funny cos I had to deliver a project in QT last week and I couldn't even watch the finished article at my desk.)

"Once the idiots were just fools gawping in through the windows. Now they've entered the building..."

I think a lot of the comedy in the print version came from the unhinged, psychopathic overstatement of the narrator's hatred of Barley for relatively trivial crimes against taste and morality. Who was this fellow, if not Barley's repressed, self-hating alter ego? I'll be interested if they show Ashcroft as a 'centre of goodness' – a reasonable and likeable man – or a jittering neurotic Goebbels, full of repressed, passionate, hissing, spitting, volatile-projected self-hatred.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1405547,00.html

key words relate to bleeding-edge 'creatives' being perfectly able to satirize themselves. i always thought the savagery of tvgohome was maxed so that you wdn't confuse it with halfway-house shite like shoreditdch twat -- it isn't comfortable satire, it's flamewar.

hmmmm.

BUT the trailers look good and thinking on it, there's no really new paradigm that's emerged to displace the barleys in "new media" circles, so it can't be that dated.

sleaze nation is still going, right? i love the dnb soundtrack on the trailer, it's exactly right.

also i have a lot invested in barley. my first ever paid piece of writing was on tvgohome, three years back. i got to use 'cunt', 'fuck', and 'pissant' in my maiden piece! woo!

xpost -- watts, say nothing!

i can't remember how i came across tvgohome but i was 18 years old and not living in london -- but anyway, my line was nathan barley helps 'explain' things that normals do know about, in advertising, magazine design, fashion, ect. after all comabat trousers, scooters, trucker caps all ended up quite high street.

i've never been a part of the media-wanker circus but have had first-hand experience of barleys -- it isn't that small a world, perhaps.

I hate to be a hata, but HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15150907&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=the-man-who-drinks-petrol-name_page.html

Does he ever write Screen Burn anymore or is he now concentrating on bigging up his own projects and writing travel features in the midst of global recession?

I don't really mind Brooker. He can be pretty funny and Screen Wipe was good. But that travel piece at the weekend was the most boring pointless thing I've read in a while. And I'm including posts like this on ILX.

despite slagging it off elsewhere, i'm taping dead set. i bet i never watch it, though. nobody here is making a convincing case for it being anything other than a mediocre diversion -- and trust me, i've got way too many of those going on right now.

Would have been even better with a slightly larger budget though.

I was surprised at how relatively expensive it looked as it is

i can't wait for ep5 of dead set (which i'm in, heh). haven't seen any of it yet though...

also love that they didn't bother with credits, just gave a URL. if Brooker's over-rated it's more because there's just so many far worse people out there doing well too.

altho maybe it did undermine a bit the 'credits are useful as an interlude between programmes that allow you to pause for thought without some numpty chattering away about what's coming next as if it wasn't easy enough for you to find this out anyway' argument he made quite well on SW

brooker? a contrarian? well i never.

i always assumed credits existed as much to doff a cap to the people who worked to create a show as to inform the viewer who these people were. as such, i'd mourn their passing if they disappeared altogether: it's like not having the autor's name on a book sleeve.

no it's closer to the book listing all the people who actually helped in the production process of the book at the end

I too was a bit perturbed by their lack of zombie knowledge, but I think that they probably wanted a contrast with most of the recent zombie projects, which almost all seem to have a good grasp of zombie history and use that for 'sly' meta-textual referencing. Which seems a bit of a strange thing to get away from when your whole schtick is OMG Zombies & Big Brother! Together at last!

I did enjoy it, tho.

no it's closer to the book listing all the people who actually helped in the production process of the book at the end

An acknowledgements page, then?

I thought it was alright, nowt special, rather too much of it got taken up with Jaime Winstone making sobbing noises. Going to the credits site (features authentic scrolling-slightly-too-quickly-to-read effect, though I did see former Gladiators winner Eunice Huthart listed in the stunt performers), I came to realise that I had no idea what any of the characters were called.

An acknowledgements page, then?

more like a list of every single person at the publishing company who ever had anything to do with it, right down to the dude who made the editor's PA his cup of tea in the morning.

ep5 of dead set (which i'm in, heh).

okay where?

> also love that they didn't bother with credits, just gave a URL

jamcredits.com (now abandoned) got there first, you Clarkson faced Guff-Prating Berkskull.

copy here: http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/J/jam/credits_ns6.html

...
KEVIN ELDON
...

the sign with Eldon's face, arrow and GOLLUM tag

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/TheyreEnglish-1.jpg

Kevin Eldon is playing the character I would actually be in the BB house

the scene with the girl pounding bits out of the zombies skull with the fire extinguisher was amazing

I thought they were going to play out the whole paranoia of the contestants disbelief that it wasn't just a stunt for a bit longer, perhaps they'll refer to it again.

ep5 of dead set (which i'm in, heh).

okay where?

― Ant Attack |=| (Ste), Tuesday, 28 October 2008 13:13

well...

haven't seen any of it yet though...

― CharlieNo4, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 12:05

so i don't know. but i'm what's known as a "background zombie"... so i might get a quarter of a second's bloodied screen time.

i'm what's known as a "background zombie"

new user name for you there.

(or me, if you don't snap it up first.)

Or a useful phrase for an ILX Lurker?

splendid idea!

ach, it was only on for half hour tonight totally wasn't expecting that.

still enjoying it.

watched last night's, and about 10 minutes of tonight. that'll be it for me. it's so fucking dull. beyond the basic premise -- big brother! zombies! -- there's absolutely nothing there, is there? the characters are ciphers, the action is predictable, the outcome interests me not a jot.

(and i appreciate what chewshabadoo says upthread about the characterisation improving, but i can't be arsed waiting around for that to happen!)

the installments are too short. would have been cool 90 minutes than two 60 minutes.

looks quite good for the budget. Obviously going off that whole current-horror movie thing with the fast cutting, the handheld, the shutter speeds etc..., but it's fine. Hardly groundbreaking or terribly inventive so far, but still a really enjoyable zombie horror by my standards. Glad the satire hasn't really got in the way of anything.

lol at Pippa telling that producer guy he was using up the oxygen

"it's not a fucking submarine"

Dead Set thread here:
Dead Set - E4 Big Brother Zombie thing!

is this out of print on DVD? anyone know where i can order it, preferably cheaply, and have it shipped to the US? (it's ridiculously expensive on amazon.co.uk.)

if you know how to use torrents then you can get it on http://thebox.bz/ - i think they have open sign up just now but if you need or want an invite then give me a shout.

It *is* out of print, aggravatingly (my copy was scratched when I lent it to someone). It went from being stacked in every HMV for 5 pounds to being tough to find in a matter of weeks, seemingly. The first 2 Charlie Brooker books are similarly tough to track down!

Sold my copy of Brookers' TV Go Home book for £40 on eBay, to none other than... actor Michael Fenton Stevens

£40?! That makes it the most valuable book I own!

the DVD is awesome. comes with that booklet and so many extras on the DVD itself. torrents don't really compare to the whole package.

true true, my friend ran off te manchester wit mine. bitch.

keep it foolish yea

oh great, downloaded this as a torrent and none of the files work AWESOME thanks internet go die.

Pssst-
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Kfairy&view=videos

Not amazing quality, but perfectly watchable.

thanks, yeah, i know (that's where i saw them the first time). problem is my wife wants to watch it, and for reasons i can't go into here (or fathom) she hates watching video on the computer.

saw this just before christmas in hmv and bought it thinking it was out of print. amazon has cheaper copies so i guess they've repressed it, or whatever you do with dvds. bum.

still a great dvd to own.

hell, I don't think I have a region-free player hooked up now, I might have to copy this over to my pc

i'm not a preacher man

keep it chopped out, yeah?

Toby, you rim-licker. How's it fucking collapsing?

well fucking weapon

Someone has upscaled this and posted it all on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtWTIY-isko

First time I've seen it since it was first broadcast nearly 20 years ago and tbh not really feeling it, first episode is ok, second is bad, not going to continue but might check out the bit with Kevin Eldon.