SPACED
Written by and Starring Jessica Stevenson and Simon Pegg
With Mark Heap, Nick Frost, Julia Deakin and Katy Carmichael
Directed by Edgar Wright
Paramount UK /London Weekend Television
Once in a while, a book, television programme, movie, or piece of music comes along that captures the spirit of a generation.
Spaced may not be that programme, but for my generation, it's damn close.
My generation has devoured and digested everything that popular culture has to offer, from Jamie and his Magic Torch to Judge Dredd. We're a generation that's as comfortable discussing the homoeroticism of the cartoon He-Man as it is the conflict in the Holy Land. Perhaps more so.
Daisy and Tim are classic underachieving twentysomethings: Tim aspires to be a comicbook artist, but spends more time on his PlayStation than at his drawing board; Daisy wants to a writer/journalist/children's author, but can't sit at the typewriter for longer than two minutes at a time, procrastinating constantly.
After a chance meeting in a greasy spoon café, Tim and Daisy end up living together in a North London flat, under the guise of being a professional couple. In the grand old tradition of British sitcoms from Rising Damp to Rentaghost, the people they end up living with are just as pathetic and screwed up as they are.
Their landlady is Marsha, a premenopausal single mother whose husband left her for a small dog, and whose daughter is the archetypal teen terror, a tornado in tights. Living downstairs is Brian, an abstract artist with some truly disturbing experimental techniques. As Tim and Daisy settle into their new flat, they learn that Marsha and Brian have a similarly unusual and secret relationship...
The two most important themes in Spaced appear to be procrastination and redemption. The two aren't as ill-matched as you might think. At the start of the series, most of the characters seem to be in a pretty low place - Tim is first betrayed, then chucked out by his girlfriend, and spends much of the series alternately pining, bitter, and playing Tekken. Daisy is completely directionless at the start of the series, maintaining a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend while cheating on him behind his back, and preferring to do anything other than sit down and do some work. Much of the humour in Spaced is derived from how the flatmates cope with their respective albatrosses, and how they come to rely on each other for support.
This redemption extends to the supporting cast, as well: Tim's best friend Mike (played by the superb Nick Frost) is a wannabe Action Man, whose theft of a Chieftain tank and attempts to conquer France got him thrown out of the Territorial Army. As the series progresses, we learn just how Tim and Mike came to be such good friends (through some hilarious flashbacks), and we see how Mike gets to make up for lost time...and lost combat.
The cast of Spaced are truly superb, and their comic timing is masterful. Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson are brilliant as Tim and Daisy. Their on-screen chemistry makes the show work: you actually believe that these two strangers could (and probably should) be living together. That, and they pull the best funny faces.
Julia Deakin (Marsha) makes for a great landlady. While the voice and manner are apparently based on a male friend of Deakin's, she always reminds me a little of Alison Steadman in the classic TV play Abigail's Party. Her slightly sleazy banter with Brian, played by Mark Heap, is sublimely funny...if a little creepy.
Heap stands out from the crowd as Brian: he may well be playing that old sitcom staple, The Wacky Neighbour, but it's much more understated than, for example, Seinfeld's whirligig sidekick, Kramer. Brian is a much quieter, nervously thoughtful character, a bit wrong in the head, thanks to all the time he spends on his own.
The rest of the cast is made up of similar well-acted oddballs, from the deliciously shallow and snide Twist (Katy Carmichael) to the pantomime cuckold Dwayne, played by Peter "Voice of Darth Maul" Serafinowicz. Watch out for David Walliams (sic) as asexual performance artist Vulva, as well as some fantastic uncredited cameos by Keith Allen and Paul "Dennis Pennis" Kaye.
The individual episodes are expertly written and directed, with homage after homage to classic films, video games and pop culture. But rather than being an exercise in showing what films the director has watched, each sight gag adds to the overall humour of the show. Spaced is visually quite cinematic, and not at all like your average sitcom.
Spaced is like a visual testament to the soul of my generation. Whereas the generation before us knew what they want (and how to get it), and the generation after us can't wait to be grown up, my generation often appears to want to be Big Kids Forever. And rather than knowing what we want, and how to get it, we know what we want, but...we really can't be arsed.
Spaced is the funniest, most wonderfully well-acted sitcom since Red Dwarf. Whether you're an apathetic twentysomething with a Gillian Anderson fixation or a struggling artist with a need to feel useful, Spaced will have something to say to you.
Review text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist