Spaced

Mrs Vache Folle bought me the DVDs of the BBC series "Spaced", and we watched half of the first season last night. Simon Pegg, of "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" fame, wrote and starred in the series with his collaborator Jessica Hynes. They play Tim and Daisy, two twenty something slackers with artistic "ambitions" (he's a comic book artist who works in a comic book store, and she's a would be writer). They pretend to be a couple in order to rent a flat together. The building in which they live is owned by Marsha, who lives upstairs with her teenage daughter, and who is enamored of Brian, the weird, dark-obsessed painter in the basement. Add in Daisy's best friend, Twist, who is "in fashion" (she works at a dry cleaners) and Brian's best friend Mike, a weapons freak, and you have the makings of a surreal comedy. Oh, and let's not forget Tim's ex-girlfriend who only recently kicked him out and Daisy's long distance boyfriend in Hull.

This series could only have been made in Great Britain and could only have been carried off so well by the likes of Pegg and his crew. If there's ever an American version of "Spaced", it would have to be on HBO. Otherwise, it would become "Ned and Stacy".