'Skip To The End!' (Spaced)

Member Name: Moominpapa

Product:	Spaced
Date:	03/03/02 (3328 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hilarious, Film referrences, Great Writing

Disadvantages: series 3 still hasn't had an official go ahead

Let's face it, there has always been at least one good British sitcom on TV. There was, however, a period when we became saturated with nothing more than dreadful comedies, 'The Fitz' being, in my opinion, the absolute worst. While all this was happening, 'Men Behaving Badly' and other greats were coming to a tearful end. This period of decline was to come to an end with 'Coupling', 'Black Books' and 'The Royal Family', but before all of these came the glorious Spaced. Spaced was a real risk for its creators Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson because they decided not to make a pilot and just go ahead and make the entire series, and it paid off. For some reason when I watched the first episode of Spaced on its first airing, I really thought it was just another sitcom over-hyped by its own advertising. From this point onwards I did not watch the rest of the series. It wasn't until I caught part of an episode of series 2 that I realised I hadn't been in the right mood at all the first time. Then E4 ran the whole second series in a night, and I stayed up till one o'clock in the morning, fixed to the screen. I was so surprised how amazing it was and that I'd ignored the first series. Then some two weeks later, Paramount Comedy channel began showing the first series every night, so I thought I'd give it another go with my new found love of the second series. As you've probably already guessed from my monotonous build up, I absolutely loved it.

Bilbo: 'Kids like Jaja.'Jaja! What about the Ewoks, they Rubbish!'
Tim: 'Jaja makes the Ewoks look like f**king Shaft!'

The first series kicks off with a café meeting between two individuals, Tim (Simon Pegg) and Daisy (Jessica Stevenson), both recently dumped and kicked out by their significant others. After a small misunderstanding they decide to pretend to be a professional couple to rent a flat they find in the paper. Cue
the beginning of a 'beautiful friendship', along with the introduction of Tim's friend Mike (Nick Frost), Daisy's friend Twist (Katy Carmichael), Tim and Daisy's new neighbour Brian (Mark Heap, and their landlady Marsha (Julia Deakin). Highlights of the seven episodes of the series include the gang's rescuing of a dog from a freelance vivisectionist, a night out clubbing, a fantastic paintball 'skirmish' and a house warming party. One of my particularly favourite moments is when a high-on-speed Tim stays up all night playing resident Evil and ends up losing his grip on reality at a party.

Tim Bisley
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Tim works in a comic book shop, but he's also an artist and hopes one day to work for dark star comics. When Tim isn't smoking 'fatty-boom batties', skateboarding or playing on his Playstation he's usually in the pub. Apart from Gillian Anderson, the main love interest in Tim's life is his ex-girlfriend Sarah, who ran off with his ex-best friend, but he gets his comeuppance in the paintball episode.

I'd always been a fan of Simon Pegg since 'Big Train', but Spaced is definitely where he begins to shine, mainly because he gets the opportunity to write with Jessica Stevenson and act out lines or entire scenes from his favourite films. Whilst watching him in Spaced you really can sense the effort he's putting in and how proud he is of the whole show. I'd like to think that apart from them both being film nuts, Simon has a lot in common with Tim, as he seems so well-suited to the role.

Daisy Steiner
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Daisy is an out of work writer, apparently just a nicer way of saying she's on the dole. She's always being harshly put down by her so-called best friend Twist, but never seems to accept that its happening. After being dumped by her boyfriend she brings a new flat-mate home in the form of Colin the dog. Daisy is the main sou
rce of the gang's 'adventures as she usually invents things to do to avoid doing any actual writing.

Before watching Spaced I'd only ever seen Jessica Stevenson in The Royal Family as the overweight Cheryl, but in the role she never got to express her acting abilities as well as she does through Spaced, not to mention her writing abilities. I'm not sure but I think Jessica is responsible for the majority of the drama in Spaced as it always feels like its had a women's touch.

Mike Watt
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Mike used to be in the T.A, until he stole a tank and tried to invade Paris. Had it not been for the temptations of Space Mountain at Disneyland Paris, or Eurodisney as it was then called. Mike makes a good best friend for Tim mainly because they both share the same fascination with guns and war. Highlights of Mike include the paintball 'skirmish' and his A-Team dance in the clubbing episode.

Nick Frost is actually Simon Pegg's real life best friend, and in fact the character of Mike was something he used to do as a joke when they were younger. This was essentially why he was cast to play Mike, though the part was most likely written for him anyway.

Brian Topp
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Brian is the artist that 'rents downstairs' (but this doesn't mean he's gay) from Tim and Daisy. Soon after befriending the pair he forms a crush on Daisy's friend Twist, which comfortably forms the basis for romance throughout the series, along with the constant sexual tension between Tim and Daisy.

Mark Heap also appeared in Big Train with Simon Pegg, and was the perfect choice to play the bizarre, usually naked, artist. His performance is reminiscent of the way he acted in the radio show Blue Jam, and the twisted TV spin-off Jam.

Marsha Klein
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Marsha is Tim, Daisy and Brian's alcoholic landlady. She has a daughter, Amber, who is represented as a blurry fla
sh of light or a pair of legs. When Marsha isn't drinking on her own in her room, she's drinking downstairs with Tim and Daisy or collecting 'rent' from Brian.

Twist Morgan
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Twist supposedly works in fashion, but actually just helps out at the dry-cleaners. She's into anorexia inducing diets, makeup and generally looking pretty. She is generally dishing out wicked insults about other people's attire, though develops a soft spot for Brian


Tyres: 'Last time I saw Mike was on Crimewatch'
Tim: 'No that was a case of mistaken identity, the police had his house surrounded all last week.
Tyres: 'No this was about a month ago'
Tim: 'Oh yeah that was him'.

After the first series promoted itself to 'the award-winning first series', it was inevitable that another series was coming. Although I find I prefer the first series, the second is still an absolute belter, developing upon the plot basis from the original and generally living up to the humour and surrealist nature of series one. The second series begins with a quick summary of what has happened so far, as well as some new news, and leads into Daisy's return from Asia. One difference between the two series is that in the first the film references were not quite as in your face as they are in the second. This isn't a bad thing, because all the references still work fantastically well, and are one of my favourites things about both series. Highlights of series two include Mike and Tim's entry for Robot Wars, a mix up between some cannabis and oregano, tank theft, a revelation for Marsha and Daisy in a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-style restaurant kitchen.

Apart from amazing writing, Spaced is also directed brilliantly by Edgar Wright. Most of the shots in the series seem like a homage to Sam Raimi's evil Dead movies, such as the crash zooms and some of the panning
shots. Edgar shows that he knows what he wants and he knows how to get it, and this isn't even including the performances he gets out of the cast. Choices of music throughout the series are more than in my favour, especially the club scene which has a great Paul Oakenfield track. Another fave of mine musically is the resident evil parody, just because it uses loads music from the game and even some footage. The zombie sequence at the beginning feels like a low budget horror movie so thumbs up to Edgar on that. The remix of the imperial march, called Battle of the Planets by Fader Gladiator, brings the whole pep-talk before the gang go to get Colin back work so well, yet isn't such as good piece of music on its own, as I found when I downloaded it.

This brings me on to the film references in Spaced. Some are big, some are small, but I just can't get enough of them. My favourite are always the really subtle ones. It really is quite surprising how many times lines in Spaced are direct quotes from Star Wars, that you completely miss on the first viewing, but pick up second time round. In series one there's a great 2001 parody with the fridge (CAL2000), which is said to be 'self-aware' and we get Tim whistling 'Daisy'?.Genius. Series 2 has a great take off of the Raptor scene in Jurassic Park, with violent youths instead of flesh-eating beasts. Apparently the series 2 DVD is going to have a special subtitle mode which displays the name of any film or TV send that appears on the screen.

Spaced also invites a whole host of stars to appear as various characters throughout. Bill Bailey plays tim's boss at the comic book store Bilbo. Kevin Eldon, from Big Train join his colleagues Simon Pegg and Mark Heap. Reese Shearsmith of the League of gentleman, and a whole host of other famous faces appear as well as a very short appearance from Keith Allen.

For any fan of the series the DVD is a must own. The commentary b
y the entire cast is fabulously entertaining as are the deleted scenes and outtakes. Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson also wrote biographies for the characters (not the actors) especially for the DVD. The series 2 DVD is due out soon so I'll be snapping that up, not to mention news of Pegg and Stevenson getting prepared to start writing series 3. I just hope it lives up to the first two.

In summary, if you haven't seen Spaced and aren't sure if you'll like it or not, my advice it to just give it a try. Channel 4 will probably start repeats of series 2 soon due to the release of the DVD, and it isn't imperative that you see the first series first, though it does help.

Mike: 'You gonna come with me?'
Tim: 'I'm not your dad Mike! #pause# Here's your sandwiches, i'll pick you up at five'

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