JULY 17, 2008

“Jar Jar makes Ewoks look like ****ing Shaft,” and other life lessons from Spaced

DVD: Spaced: The Complete Series

Imagine Kevin Smith’s Clerks with English accents and a believable female lead, and you may begin to understand the brilliance of Spaced, the British comedy series that aired from 1999 to 2001. Instead of Jay and Silent Bob, Spaced delivers Daisy and Tim (series creators Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg), twentysomething roommates whose lives would be pretty boring . . . if they didn’t think they were living in an episode of The X-Files.

Spaced is about a generation of adults who live and die under pop culture’s influence, the kind of people still recovering from the disappointment of Star Wars, Episode 1. Accordingly, Pegg, Hynes, and director Edgar Wright (the team behind Shaun of the Dead) drench Spaced in popular references from The Matrix to Murder, She Wrote. But saving the show from über-cleverness is the sweet, very real relationship between Daisy and Tim, best friends who may just be perfect for each other.

Spaced: The Complete Series (available on DVD 7/22) includes all 14 episodes, with commentary by such pop-culture-geek luminaries as Quentin Tarantino, South Park’s Matt Stone, and, of course, Kevin Smith. The circle is complete.

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Spaced: The Complete Series

Spaced: The Complete Series on Netflix

the Spaced website

a clip from Spaced (NSFW)