"Skip to the end": SPACED (also known as "That show Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright did")

This is a thread for discussion of the brilliant, hilarious British sitcom Spaced. I'd also like to feel out interest for an episode-by-episode, so whether you're a longtime fan or someone who has no experience with it but would like to learn more about it, please speak up.

For those of you unfamiliar with Spaced, it's a two-season/series cult British sitcom best known as the big previous collaboration of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, the geniuses behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. However, credit for the show doesn't go to that pair; it was in fact Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson (now Jessica Hynes), the two stars, who co-wrote it. Edgar Wright was brought in as the show's director, and that's how his collaboration with Pegg got started.

The show is about Tim Bisley (Pegg) -- a comic book/video-game/sci-fi geek and general slacker who's suffering from a breakup with his longtime girlfriend -- and Daisy Steiner (Hynes) -- an unsuccessful, unmotivated writer and theater-geek type -- meeting while apartment-hunting. In desperation, they agree to pose as a couple to land a flat advertised as "professional couples only." The supporting cast is Marsha Klein (Julia Deakin), their alcoholic landlady; Brian Topp (Mark Heap), the awkward, bizarre artist who lives in the downstairs flat; Mike Watt (the mighty Nick Frost), Tim's best friend and a total gun nut; and Twist Morgan (Katy Carmichael), Daisy's incredibly superficial, airheaded friend. The show follows Tim and Daisy's adventures in mid-twenties aimlessness and underachievement. It's probably one of the best, most honest representations of geekiness and the confusion and disappointments of one's twenties out there. The pop-culture-heavy humor is relatively similar to Pegg's later works, and of course Wright's directorial style is the same.

For those of you familiar with Spaced . . . what do I need to tell you?

 

It's a good show. As a general thing sitcoms don't interest me, but Wright and Pegg are two for two in the hilarious movies dept, and depending how Scott Pilgrim turns out I'm about ready to add Wright to my favorite directors list, so I checked it out. Quite funny stuff. I enjoyed it.

 

As a fan of Hot Fuzz (but not particularly Shaun of the Dead), I'd certainly like to take a look at this. Got to get through South Park, Battlestar, The Wire, Band of Brothers, 30 Rock, Life on Mars, and all kinds of other things first, but we'll get there.

Odd to think that the next collaboration of Wright, Pegg, and Frost is actually going to be The Adventures of Tintin...

 

I hear you. Choosing which television series/season to watch next when all of a sudden in the last handful of years there are a ton worth watching has gotten to be quite an intimidating decision!

 

Apparently it's available in its entirety on Hulu.