Editorial Review:Product Description:Spaced revolves around two idle twentysomething flatmates - immature skateboarding would-be comic artist Tim (Simon Pegg) and moody responsibility-shy Daisy (Jessica Stevenson) and their self-induced lack of success in employment relationships and life in general. Together with their oddball assortment of friends and neighbors Marsha Brian Mike and Twist they exist in a world perched precariously on the edge of normality.Running Time: 343 min.System Requirements:Running Time: 343 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/BBC Rating: NR UPC: 883929019748 Manufacturer No: 1000038748
Amazon.com: It only takes one episode to become very protective of this 1999 British Comedy Award-winning series that put comedy soul mates Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson (now Hynes), as well as Nick Frost, and director Edgar Wright (
Shaun of the Dead,
Hot Fuzz) on the map. One can only hope a threatened American version is never produced. This is one of those brilliant, off-center, lightning-in-a-bottle creations that gets you so jazzed, you want to turn all your friends on to it.
Spaced (actually,
Friends might have been a better title; too bad it was taken) stars Pegg and Stevenson as strangers Tim and Daisy, 'amiable 20-somethings' who pose as a 'professional couple' to rent an apartment. He is a recently-dumped aspiring comic book artist. She is an easily distracted writer. As the series unfolds, their apartment becomes an 'island of calm in the ocean of life' as Tim and Daisy form a kind of 21st century family with their similarly misfit friends, including soused landlord Marsha (Julia Deakin), who lives with her teenager daughter (aka 'the devil in a A cup,' who is heard, but never quite seen), Brian (Mark Heap), an artist who deals in anger, fear, and aggression, Simon's best friend Mark (Frost), a militaristic gun nut, and Daisy's best friend, Twist (Katy Carmichael), a fashion poseur (in the series' penultimate episode, look for a pre-
Office Ricky Gervais).
Spaced is not so much interested in Tim and Daisy's charade as it is in cramming each episode with pop culture references and obscure in-jokes, and brilliantly realized film and TV homages, ranging from Woody Allen's
Manhattan to
Pulp Fiction and
The Empire Strikes Back (
Star Wars, especially, looms large in Tim's slacker universe). As with
Arrested Development,
Spaced benefits from repeat viewings to catch missed bits of business and gags that fly by at a
Simpsons-esque rate. This
Complete Series set is everything
Spaced's fervent following would demand. Each episode is complemented by the original commentaries as well as newly-recorded gabfests that also feature American friends of the show, including Kevin Smith, Patton Oswalt, Quentin Taratinto, Matt Stone, Diablo Cody, and Bill Hader. There are deleted scenes and outtakes, and, best of all, an hour-long 2007 Q&A with Wright and the cast, in which Pegg allows that, had there been a third series (and we can still dream), it would have provided viewers hoping that Tim and Daisy would ultimately get together with 'a moment to make every hair of your body stand on end.' You will see such a moment if you 'skip to the end' of the essential near two-hour series retrospective.
--Donald Liebenson
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
-
BEST SHOW EVER!!!!!!
It is hilarious and everyone who enjoys Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead or Run Fatboy Run will love this!
Rating: -
I LOVE this show!!!
* If you like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz - you'll love this series. The characters grow on you until you find yourself slurring \"Hello, Briiian\" to your friends and neighbors. I would give it more stars if I could. Brilliant! ...
Rating: -
Simply brilliant
Not much more to say, I love this show, like "The Office" it is short-lived but in Britain they don't milk shows going for years like they do in the US.
Highly recommended.
Very tight comedy, love it.
A must have. I just pray they don't try to make a US version, please don't ruin it.
Rating: -
Thrilled to see this released in US format!
* I was a 25 year-old American studying in England when this series originally aired on Channel 4. I thought it was the most funny, honest, accurate portrait of my generation living in Britain at that time. It's well acted, cleverly shot and just about every scene has some homage to the writer's favourite sci-fi and horror flicks. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz in my opinion are not nearly as good. I saw myself and my friends in these characters and more than once I was laughing and cringing with embarrasement at the same time, thinking \"god, is this really how we look when we go dancing???\" Err, I hate to say it, but yes, we really did look that ridiculous!!
...
Rating: -
Gets better with age
Spaced was a UK sitcom that ran for two seasons in 1999 and 2001 and was tremendously critically acclaimed at the time. The creative team subsequently moved into cinema, creating the hit movies Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and the forthcoming The World Ends, but Spaced remains by far their funniest and most rewarding work.
The series opens with aspiring comic book artist Tim Bisley (Simon Pegg) and workshy writer Daisy Steiner (Jessica Stephenson) both having to find a new place to live. Randomly bumping into one another in the local cafe, they decide to fake being a couple to rent a surprisingly cheap flat in London. The rest of the regular cast is rounded off by their landlady Marsha (a wine-swigging, ex-groupie single mum), Tim's best friend Mike (a failed soldier with a weapons fixation), Daisy's best friend Twist (who Tim sums up as being a "bit like Cordelia from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and latterly its spin-off series Angel, which is set in LA,") and Brian, the mildly pretentious artist (specialities: anger, pain, fear and aggression) who rents Marsh's basement flat.
It's a pretty traditional sitcom set-up, but Spaced differs from the average sitcom in two important respects. First, it is directed, shot and edited much more like a movie, with fast-cuts, segues, occasionally impressive special effects and the use of real locations (a nightclub sequence is actually filmed in a proper nightclub, for example, rather than a lame set). Secondly, the series is absolutely overflowing with movie, TV and comic references, some verbal, others visual, some subtle and some pretty outrageous. The DVDs come equipped with a 'homage-o-metre' which tracks these references as they fly past. The homage-o-metre almost explodes during Season 2 when Robot Wars, Fight Club ("No-one talks about Robot Club!") and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are all heavily referenced in just one episode.
What makes Spaced special is the way these elements are combined with some excellent writing and acting, particularly from Pegg and Stephenson as the leads and the brilliant Mark Heap as Brian (who went on from Spaced to win acclaim in a number of other Channel 4 comedy shows, most notably Green Wing). The comedic situations are also hilarious, such as Tim getting loaded on cheap speed and playing Resident Evil 2 for 12 hours straight, leading to him visualising the world as if a zombie apocalypse is taking place (this was the inspiration for Shaun of the Dead), or the gang's attempts to gatecrash their teenage neighbours' party turning into a Close Encounters of the Third Kind homage. There's also plenty of cameos from other comedians, with Little Britain's David Walliams playing transsexual artist Vulva and The Office's Ricky Gervais putting in a cameo as a slimy newspaper worker, whilst the irrepressible Bill Bailey steals every scene he's in as Tim's comic shop boss Bilbo Bagshot (who retains mild guilt about once punching his dad in the face for saying Hawk the Slayer was rubbish, instead of suggesting they watch Krull and compare the two).
The two seasons are linked by ongoing story arcs, although these are fairly low-key. Daisy and Tim having to fake being in a relationship to appease Marsha is a point revisited several times (leading to awkwardness when both end up in other relationships), whilst Mike is battling to be readmitted to the Territorial Army, having been thrown out after trying to invade Paris with a Chieftain tank. The second season is linked together by Daisy's employment problems, Brian and Twist's romance and Tim's utter hatred and loathing of The Phantom Menace, which lands him in hot water on several occasions (and gives rise to the legendary primal scream of, "BUT JAR-JAR BINKS MAKES THE EWOKS LOOK LIKE FU**ING SHAFT!").
Spaced (*****) lasted for just 14 episodes almost a decade ago, but remains one of the funniest, most entertaining sitcoms ever committed to screen. Even now rewatching certain episodes reveals more previously-missed homages to movies or comics, and the series seems to just get better with age. The complete series is available on DVD in both the UK and the USA. The US DVD edition is even more impressive, as it features guest-commentaries from the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Matt Stone.
