Long before Charlie Brooker made Newswipe and Black Mirror (also known as the best show ever) and Julian Barratt danced around with Noel Fielding in the Mighty Boosh - the pair made a show together, it was called Nathan Barley.
If you haven't seen it the show came out in 2005 and the premise is simple: it predicted the hipsterization of the world.
Each episode centres around Dan Ashcroft, a grumpy magazine journalist who publishes a piece ranting about the 'rise of the idiots' - aka the hip, ignorant scenesters - in magazine SugArape (this is basically Vice magazine, before Vice is what it is today). And Dan's nemisis but also his biggest fan, the kings of the hipsters blogger, Nathan Barley - who spends his days cycling up and down a road that looks a lot like Shoreditch High Street on his trendy little bike.
The show is pure comedy gold. There's cameos from Benedict Cumberbatch (pre Sherlock obviously), a young Ben Whishaw (pre Bond) and Richard Ayoade (pre all his other brilliance). And is filled to the brim with some of the best lines TV has ever aired - 'It's well bum' and 'keep it futile' and a our personal favourite 'totally fucking Mexico'.
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The only travesty of the show was it only lasted one series. But all is not lost as the first series is still on 4OD so you can rewatch. When we recently spent a Sunday redigesting the show what got us is how scarily accurate it all is at predicting the future. Even Charlie Brooker recently told junkee magazine: 'I’m quite horrified because a lot of my made-up scenarios come true.'
Here's some of the things it saw coming:
Vlogging
Sorry to break it to you Zoella, Alfie or Tanya and co weren't the first stars of YouTube. Nope siree, first there was Nathan Barley. Each day on the show he sat in front of his computer and vlogged. Of course there was less shopping hauls and beauty DIYs in Nathan's day and more hillarious one liners on to his site trashbat.co.ck (yep, that's short for co.cock - why the 'ell did this not catch on?)
The B****eard x Beanie Combo
Take a stroll down Kingsland High St in Dalston on a Saturday and the streets are swarming with people who we can only assume were Nathan Barley extras. The look? It's beards, beanies, headphones and metallic bomber jackets.
**Bleached Hair **
When the dip dye and bleached sections of out hair first hit our fashion consciousness from Bleach London we thought it was SO out there. In fact Dan and Nathan had both already done it. Albeit with white paint. They saw this beauty trend happeneing.
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The Selfie
Yep, that's right - it wasn't Kimye who made this pose popular. It was Mr Nathan Barley - he's continually snapping himself, much to the annoyance of Dan.
The iPhone
On the show Nathan is obsessed with his phone - and it can do everything. It plays music, videos, there's dj decks, oh and it's a super cool shape. At the time of first watching we all had our Nokia 3210s and we scoffed at such an idea. Now, well, we pretty much do everything through our mobiles; we listen to T-Swift, we watch YouTube, we date (thanks Tinder), pretty much everything, all day. But there is one amazing thing Nathan's phone could do that ours still can't and that's heat up a cup of tea with a laser - come on Apple, sort it out!
**Want to watch for yourself? You can check out the first episode here: **
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Follow Lena on Twitter: @lenadecasparis
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.