"Hilarious & co"

'Nathan Barley' finished tonight with possibly the best episode of the whole series. "Preacher Man" Dan had the pleasure of watching Nathan drink a cup of black coffee with scrambled egg and smoked salmon in it on his recommendation, but the man behind Trashbat had the last laugh.

It was a half-hour filled with very distinctive Morrisisms, from the 'Labour Party Conference' game Pingu was playing on the X-Box to the junkie choir going around schools. He might have taken the concept of ordering someone into doing lots of bizarre and offensive things down the phone straight from his 90s radio show, but it still made for entertaining viewing.

I enjoyed the shout-out to Vernon Kay ("Keep it MENCAP"), but Nathan's finest moment was when the bloke from the film company referred to his pranks as satirical and like "Swift as 'Jackass'", and he replied, "Yeah, or ... even faster".

The series might have been a bit of an in-joke with a quite specific "chuckle demographic", but then Nathan Barleys aren't confined to East London, even though they're highly concentrated there. Probably something that'll work better if watched in sequence, and with repeated viewings revealing new facets all the time, but hardly the dramatic slump in quality certain Morris fans were claiming before the series aired.