Spaced : Skip to the end…
A Guardian journalist recently wrote this piece singing the praises of cult TV show Spaced. I’ve always been a fan of it, but this article made me realise just how amazing this show was, and the impact it had upon its fans, despite only lasting two series.
Following the obscure adventures of flatmates Tim Bisley (Simon Pegg) and Daisy Steiner (Jessica Hynes), who are later joined by the new ‘baby’…I mean dog….Colin (played by Ada) Living in a flat (not a bedsit), Daisy and Tim pretend to be a couple to get their dream flat, and the series follows them as they lie to their landlady Marsha (and daughter Amber), go to a rave with Tyres, rescue Colin from a dog kidnapper, go to obscure art shows, and find love (but not with each other). The other characters are Mike, (Tim’s best mate who stole a tank and invaded Paris) Twist, (Daisy’s best friend) and Brian, the failing artist who lives downstairs who paints fear, pain, anger, and in watercolours.
This series produced some of the best writing from the 90′s, and episodes that will forever remain in Spaced fan’s minds. Each episode contains cultural references that show that the director Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg really know their films, and probably spent most of their early childhoods in a dark room watching Star Wars (but not Episode One, that still hurts in the minds of Pegg and Wright.) But what’s even better about this show is that you don’t have to be a uber-geek that understands every reference to find the show funny. It’s funny on its own, with or without the film references. You don’t need to know that the episode where Daisy gets a new job is a mickey-take of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to find it funny.
Not wanting to sound like a Spaced fan on a massive rant, but the classic lines, characters, and episode plots remain engraved into every fan who followed it. What was great about Spaced is they stopped it at its peak, rather than writing series after series, dragging out the “will they won’t they” with Tim and Daisy and making the plots even more implausible, they stopped after two series.
But it’s not just the writing that obviously was done with great love and care, the directing by Edgar ‘let’s get it’ Wright helped make the show timeless. One of the stories that proves the team’s dedication is the rave episode. Filmed at 9am in the morning with no music, Edgar Wright made a day’s filming in silence into one of the most loved scenes of the show. It’s no great surprise to learn that Edgar Wright has been directing and making films from a young age.
This has allowed a cult following to develop over several years, with new fans discovering Spaced every minute. While many fans have begged Simon and Jessica to do another series, the hard-core devotees know that Spaced should stay as it is: classic, witty, original and stuck at series two.
Since Spaced, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson have had great careers apart. Jessica has made a mixture of films (Confetti, Magicians) and TV (Driving Lessons, Doctor Who) Simon has appeared in several films and has taken the States by storm by appearing in the latest Star Trek film (although it is an odd numbered Star Trek, which every Spaced fan knows is meant to be shit….) But one of his unknown films is Big Nothing, where Simon Pegg adopts an american accent and an altogether more nasty and scheming character than Tim Bisley ever was.
But not wanting to be stuck with Spaced, the duo of Wright and Pegg have created the classic Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, both doing well at the box office and DVD sales (probably aided by fans like me who went to see it seven times…) The superb writing and directing has continued in these films, and the fans await with baited breath for the final film in the cornetto triology.
However, without this scene from Spaced, then Shaun of the Dead may never of existed, as Edgar and Simon decided that the scene was too much fun to shoot and were determined to make a film out of it.
Still waiting? Enjoy this clip from Shaun of the Dead instead. Nothing quite as funny as watching a zombie being hit with a poolcue with Queen in the background.
