TV: Spaced

All this week, Trio is showing episodes of Spaced, the British sitcom (or Britcom, if you will -- but I hope you won't) from the creators and stars of Shaun of the Dead. (Possibly they've been showing the episodes for a while now, and I only just became aware of it.)

I've seen two episodes so far. The first one threw me for a loop -- I hadn't known what to expect, but certainly nothing quite like that. Lots of quick cuts and shaky cam and other irritating camera tricks -- it was going for the look of a film, but a really annoying film, one directed by Michael Bay. (Kind of like Keen Eddie.) It took me a while to get into the show's point of view; the creators are obviously heavily versed in and influenced by action movies (and video games and comic books), and are clearly spoofing those elements as they use them. (Most of the time -- sometimes I think they just use those elements because they think they're cool.) You can pick out about a dozen specific movie spoofs in each episode, from The Matrix to Star Wars to The Shining to Evil Dead to a bunch I probably didn't even get.

The second episode won me over completely. I had gotten used to the look of the show, and figured out who the characters were, and could just sit back and enjoy it. And I certainly did. When they got to a dramatic, elaborately choreographed shoot-out scene with no guns -- everyone's just using their fingers and making sound effects with their mouths -- I was laughing so hard I could barely see the TV.

The basic premise behind Spaced is that the two main characters (and the show's writers), Tim (Simon Pegg, Shaun in Shaun of the Dead) and Daisy (Jessica Stevenson, Yvonne in Shaun) are pretending to be a couple so they can rent a room in a house. Kind of a reverse Three's Company. Why they have to do that, I don't know -- I only got that much information from the IMDb page. It didn't really come up in the episodes I watched.

There's a lot of story packed into each episode. There are half a dozen main characters, and they split off into three separate plotlines each episode (or in the two I watched, anyway). And there are a lot of side characters with their various stories. But at the heart are the two leads, both of whom are very funny and very likeable, and who are going through the aimless, post-college, video game playing, bar hopping, still looking for a career and a mate, late 20s years.

It's a shame there were only 14 episodes made. Crazy Brits, with your seven-episode TV seasons. No wonder you have to fill up your TV with American reruns!