David Quinn | Freelance journalist and filmmaker based in Manchester

Barley, that’s who. A self-proclaimed ’self-facilitating media node’ who spends his days ‘working’ on a website he calls ‘trashbat dot cock’.

About the worst thing you could say about Nathan Barley, the eponymous Channel 4 sitcom character, is that he is an idiot: a clueless, pointless dreg; a toff pretending to be ’street’. But it wasn’t always that way, which is why Nathan Barley, the sitcom, is almost – but not quite – disappointing.

Written by bona fide TV genius Chris Morris and his mate Charlie Brooker (incidentally, the finest TV columnist ever), Barley started life as a character on Brooker’s satirical website, TVGoHome.com. This foul-mouthed, often highly surreal parody of the Radio Times, which later became a book, featured listings for an imaginary TV programme simply called Cunt.

Barley (the sitcom character) and Barley (the star of Cunt) are, annoyingly, different beasts. While the former is a simple-minded berk, the latter was a far more obvious scumbag, with peculiar penchants for both porn and prostitutes.

When I heard Morris and Brooker were making a ‘real’ TV version of Cunt, I became extremely excited. Morris, after all, is responsible for the 2001 Brass Eye “special” on paedophilia, which still holds the record for the largest number of complaints ever about an original TV programme.

The finished version of Nathan Barley, however, doesn’t quite live up to its potential as the darkest sitcom ever made. Instead, Barley has been transformed into an almost loveable dunce with a nice line in playground-friendly catchphrases.

There are other problems, too. For a start, it’s a bit late. The Barley character was conceived on Brooker’s website at the height of the late 1990s dotcom boom. Six years on and the context doesn’t quite ring true.

And the passage of time hasn’t helped the form, either. At the time the project was conceived, the hyperbolic sitcom format must have seemed like the only choice. Today, following the low-key success of Nighty Night and Peep Show, it all looks a bit OTT. Nathan Barley would have suited a mock docu-soap format, but of course The Office defined that genre four years ago.

Despite all that, however, Nathan Barley is better television than 95% of all other programmes, so it seems churlish to complain. Morris is a master wordsmith and much of the dialogue in Nathan Barley is jaw-dropping. At one point, Barley is heard to describe his website as like “two people leaping from the Twin Towers, fucking on the way down”.

The Dan Ashcroft character is similarly excellent. The morose Ashcroft (played by Julian Barratt) is trapped in a sort of Kafka-esque nightmare, wherein the more he derides his peers, the more they love him. Witness the scene at the end of episode two where, from the stage of a Trashbat club night, Ashcroft yells desperately at the crowd: “You’re all fucking idiots! Shut up!”, as Barley raps about a “9/11 of the mind”. Their response is to cheer wildly.

It’s the sort of genuinely chilling moment that makes the whole exercise worthwhile.

Stuff to watch or avoid over the next month: 

Comic Relief Does Fame Academy

Ok, so it’s in aid of charity. But watching Jenny Éclair, Sam from EastEnders and that twat from DIY SOS prat about on stage every night for week is enough to make you want to down five packets of Anadin and slide towards an excruciating death. I’d cash in my ISA and give Comic Relief a grand just to make them go away if I thought it would make any difference. And it’s presented by Patrick Kielty!! Jesus.

Verdict: Don’t watch (but donate cash at www.comicrelief.com)

The Ann Widdecombe Project

Ann Widdecombe is a national institution. A virgin, a moralist and a purveyor of outlandish dresses, here she acts as an agony aunt, solving family and workplace dysfunction with her no-nonsense approach to the universe and hectoring womanly shouting.

Verdict: Watch (or is it witch?)

Property Ladder

I can’t get enough of this type of thing. The format is virtually flawless and now that the property market has gone tits up, this new series should be highly entertaining. Goodbye profits, hello financial destitution. Highly addictive.

Verdict: Watch

Doctor Who

Dum-de-dum. Dum-de-dum. Dum-de-dum. Dum-de-dum….

Verdict: Watch!