Spaced: 10 Things To Love About Edgar Wright's Hidden Gem
Before The Big Bang Theory ruined the concept, Edgar Wright gave us a wonderful geek-centric sitcom.
We’ve all heard of the Cornetto Trilogy; those three fantastic films made by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost for the sake of getting free ice cream.
Between Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End, these movies parodied their respective film genres in wonderfully intelligent and insightful ways. That’s to say nothing of the quality of the movies themselves, whose camerawork and editing gave Edgar Wright’s unique filmmaking style the chance to display its full potential.
It didn’t start here though, and if you were fortunate enough to come across it before, you might recognise these things from a certain sitcom of the late 90’s.
Spaced was a TV series that aired in 1999, written by Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Wright. It follows the two writers as a pair of unemployed creatives in London, their struggle to stay above the poverty line and still find fulfillment in life.
With a talented and colourful supporting cast, this series set the expectation for the later films that Pegg and Wright would pen together. Surreal, hilarious, with a surprising capacity for emotional turmoil and an ultimately heartfelt tone, Spaced is a hidden gem bursting with merit and worthy of recognition.
10. Pegg And Frost
The relationship between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is as iconic as it is adorable.
With a near unique dynamic between two men in modern showbusiness, their mutual affection is a lesson in platonic fulfillment.
In Hot Fuzz, Nicholas Angel and Danny Butterman showed us how friends can learn from each other and grow to be better people whilst overcoming tremendous odds. In Shaun of the Dead, Shaun and Ed's friendship was a clear weight that held back personal growth, but through sacrifice and struggle the two of them ultimately got what they wanted most. In World's End, pushing through adversity and pain together helped reconcile long-held grudges, and the two most disparate of people came back together, even if they necessarily shouldn't have.
It all started here though, with the friendship between Tim and Mike displaying an early form of the character interactions we see later in their careers. A close childhood friendship with a dynamic that, though flawed, is nevertheless heartfelt and rooted in care for one another. A lack of fear around physical contact and an abundance of mutual support, even a little jealousy, these two make a heartwarming pair that really do complete each other.