In 1999, two years before the original Office and one year before Curb Your Enthusiasm, an off-beat, extremely British sitcom changed what a comedy series could feel like. That series was Spaced, which debuted 25 years ago on September 24, 1999. Conceived by Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, and directed by Edgar Wright, Spaced helped usher in an entirely different pop culture landscape. Today, it might seem like a footnote to more famous media like Shaun of the Dead, but the influence of Spaced on the geek media world is perhaps greater than can be measured.
Virtually unknown at the time, Pegg and Hynes gave the world a strangely specific gift that’s still relevant 25 years later, even if it hasn’t quite passed the test of time.
Spaced focuses on Tim (Pegg) and Daisy (Hynes), a pair of down-and-out slackers who lie about being a couple to get cheap rent on a small London flat. Daisy fancies herself an aspiring writer, while Tim dreams of being a comic book artist. The idea that Tim and Daisy must pretend to be a “professional couple” to keep their apartment is, oddly, the most unrealistic aspect of the series, which drenches itself in pop culture homages and fantasy sequences.
Inspired by his love of all things science fiction and fantasy, Tim works at a comic book shop and plays video games all day. This leads to several opinionated rants about sci-fi, including digs at Babylon 5, a Season 2 storyline where Tim loses his job because of his hatred of The Phantom Menace, and a bizarrely prescient moment in which Tim declares that “every odd-numbered Star Trek movie is shit.” Such moments may not seem unusual today, but they were still rare in 1999.
In 2009, Simon Pegg would play Scotty in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, which was technically the 11th film in the franchise but decidedly not shit. By 2016, he’d even co-written an odd-numbered Trek film, the 13th and still most recent Trek feature, Star Trek Beyond, which was generally well received. In 2015, he had a secret role in The Force Awakens as Unkar Plutt, the wicked former owner of the Millennium Falcon. An audition for that future can be found in Tim, a foul-mouthed, lovable loser who was a template for Shaun of the Dead’s title character.
But Spaced is much more than a precursor to Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s successful film collaboration. It’s also more than just the origin of the great chemistry between Pegg and Nick Frost, a combination that would pay off in Hot Fuzz and World’s End. Spaced has a unique identity that only worked as a limited TV series, and really only at the specific time it aired. Not all of its jokes will land today, partly because some of its references seem dated and also because, like watching The Hangover after 2009, some of the basic punchlines are problematic.
Characters are constantly high or drunk without being judged for it, which felt transgressive then but strangely tame by today’s standards. If people were on this many drugs in a contemporary show, it probably wouldn’t be considered a straight comedy. But Spaced isn’t just a high-concept show about a group of misfits; it's a working-class show about working-class people. Yes, their geeky interests and pop culture references are built into the characters, but ultimately, the show was unique because, from a class point of view, it was authentic. Spaced may have presented Daisy and Tim as hyperbole, but their basic core seemed hilariously real.
Instead of worrying about appealing to a mass audience, Pegg, Hynes, and Wright seemed to aim at a very small demographic, they knew must exist. And they knew because they were in it. Spaced wasn’t made to be a massive hit, but a kind of inside joke among friends. Today, it’s not at all unusual for a TV character to reference dorky pop culture; shows like The Big Bang Theory were even built around doing so. But while everyone may be in on the joke now, Spaced is still unique, smart, and more genuine than most of the sitcoms that have followed it.
