“Watching Spaced is kinda like watching a Kevin Smith film if Kevin Smith had any real talent,” Kevin Smith blurbs on the DVD case of Spaced: The Complete Series. “Spaced is so damn good I’m seriously honored to be quoted on the DVD cover,” adds South Park‘s Matt Stone. And then there’s Judd Apatow: “I laughed hard and I hate comedy.”
To those who’ve been paying attention, Spaced is old news—the sitcom aired on the BBC from 1999-2001, and it’s been available here in the States via less-than-licit means since then. But it wasn’t until July that Spaced officially made its way to America on DVD, and seeing as how one of the show’s stars, Simon Pegg, has a new flick opening this week [see review of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, p. 43], I’m finding it impossible to resist writing about Spaced, even at this late date.
Written by Jessica Hynes (née Stevenson) and Simon Pegg and directed by Edgar Wright, Spaced has become retroactively famous as the first collaboration between Pegg and Wright, who’d go on to make Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. But while those films and Spaced share more than a few similarities, Spaced is its own creature: In telling the story of wannabe comic book artist Tim (Pegg), wannabe writer Daisy (Hynes), and their friends and housemates, the show milks the usually tired sitcom template for all it’s worth. Dialogue is quick and witty, characters grow and change, pop culture homages blur past at lightspeed, and the whole clever, goodhearted thing lasts a mere 14 episodes, which is the main reason why I’m pretty sure there’s no god.
The three-disc DVD set boasts a feature-length doc on the series, plus commentaries from Wright, the cast, and some of the show’s more famous devotees, like Quentin Tarantino and Patton Oswalt. But it still doesn’t feel like enough. I’m looking forward to Pegg and Wright’s next film as much as anybody, but what I really want to do is start watching Spaced again from the beginning. Which I think I will. Right now.
Anal correction first: Spaced wasn’t ever a BBC show. It was on Channel 4 (hence why the episodes are less than 25 minutes – half an hour once you’ve added in adverts, which the BBC doesn’t have).
However, you’re right about one thing: Spaced is the greatest TV comedy of the last twenty years. There’s no contest. How it will go down with the average American remains to be seen (you have to keep your brain turned on to enjoy it…), but you owe it to yourself to find out.
Buy it. Watch it. Then watch it again. Repeat until all your friends are annoyed with you talking about how great it is.