It worked for The Office, right?
If you’ve never seen the show in question, understand this: Before they broke out with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright were joined by Jessica Stevenson in a mild spin on Three’s Company where Pegg and Stevenson pretend to be married in order to live in a married couples only apartment in a London suburb. They added some of the building’s quirky characters into the mix, dropped nerd culture references left and right and were an all-around hilarious bunch. The Office and Python aside, this is one of my favorite, ahem, Britcoms of all time. It’s a shame there are only in the neighborhood of 14 episodes in the entire run but that’s how they do it in England and shorter season runs often work out better and no one ever seems to jump the proverbial shark because they never get a chance to.
Now understand that Spaced is being adapted for American TVs. The Office certainly wasn’t the first time this happened since most of America’s worst guilty pleasure programming was adapted to become shit like American Idol and Trading Spaces but you have to bear one thing in mind: This is being developed for Fox so you can expect a couple of things. One, it’ll be completely out of step with contemporary nerd culture and secondly, it’ll be cancelled after five episodes.
The Office works because of a carefully measured blend of comic talent in front of and behind the camera. Fox has never showed that sort of awareness. At best they’re a grindhouse of exploitation TV. When the majors rolled out a new reality show you could count on Fox to mash up the popular themes of those shows into their own mean-spirited reality show rip-off. With the exception of the Fox sunday night double whammy of The Simpsons and The X-Files, I can’t think of a single thing they’ve ever broadcast that’s really worth praise. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the utterly vapid producer/director McG is behind the whole thing.
So they have Spaced, whatever, they’re pimping it in the trades with Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s names all over the ad copy but this is what Mr. Wright had to say about that on his Myspace blog:
“Wonderland’s McG and Granada’s Robert Green will exec produce alongside Barr; the extent of Pegg’s and Wright’s involvement is still unclear. But Johnson likens the effort to NBC’s adaptation of Ricky Gervais’ and Stephen Merchant’s “The Office” for the U.S., with Greg Daniels in charge.”
The interesting part of that is, no-one has been in touch with me at all. Haven’t deigned to get in contact. So my involvement is indeed very unclear.
Would love to know what you all have to say about it.
P.S. I can confirm too, that Simon was never contacted either. I don’t really want to get involved at all, but it infuriates me that they would a) never bother to get in touch but still b) splash me and Simon’s names all over the trade announcements and imply that we’re involved in the same way Ricky & Steve were with The Office.
Also, it’s worth stressing that I will not be profiting from this reversion, nor do they have to get permission from me to make it.
“With the exception of the Fox sunday night double whammy of The Simpsons and The X-Files, I can’t think of a single thing they’ve ever broadcast that’s really worth praise. “……
Married With Children was hillarious and ran for a LONG time, something like 9 seasons or so? Not to take away form the Simpsons and X-Files, but I would have to say that MWC DEFINATELY has a place in the history of the Fox network.
The only good thing that I can see coming from this is a possible R1 DVD release of the original show. When “Shaun of the Dead” did so well Stateside I thought that “Spaced” would finally get a US release as well, only it never happened. Then I got all hopeful again with “Hot Fuzz”, to no avail. But as absolutely craptastic as this remake is bound to be, hopefully “Spaced” will finally come to the States as it was meant to be.
Until then, I’ll be watching my R2 import. I don’t think that I’ll even touch this remake, especially as its c”reators” didn’t even have the common decency to contact either Mr. Wright or Mr. Pegg about it. A real class act, that.
On a slightly unrelated note, have you ever watched “Black Books”? Along with “Spaced”, it’s one of my favourite British sitcoms and it stars Dylan Moran, the guy who played David from “Shaun of the Dead” as a crazy, drunken, chain smoking, Irish bastard. It also had Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Pete Serafinowicz as guest stars. I highly recommend it.
I’m always up for new British comedy. I’ll check it out. The name rings a bell. I also recommend Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace. It’s absolutely terrible, but it’s supposed to be.
I was also hopeful for an R1 of Spaced. I don’t know why I don’t just shell out for the R2 DVDs.
[...] Fear. Pain. Aggression. Spaced being adapted for US television. November 1st. 2007, 9:05am unknown wrote an interesting post today [...]
Its one of my favourite shows, but it’s so British I don’t imagine it will turn out anything like the original once you Americans have had your greasy hands all over it. Nevertheless, I will hold judgement until I have seen it.
FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!
… and thanks for the Black Books recomendation. I’m definitely going to check it out!
BTW, Peep Show is just as good as Spaced and well worth getting hold of.
Is Peep Show the sketch comedy show? I think a friend of mine was telling me about that one a while back. Until then, I’d never heard of it.
Also, did you ever watch Brass Eye, Ewok? I’ve heard that it’s pretty good, too.
No Peep Show is a continuing story about two best friends. The majority is filmed through the characters point of view (which works a lot better than it sounds) and you can hear what people are thinking. You should all check it out as it’s genious. Here is an episode from series 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1069550821130799478&q=peep+show&total=1941&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Brass Eye is great too, and caused much controversy when it lampooned the media’s take on paedophilia and drugs etc and idiots who probably didn’t even watch it were outraged. Quite extreme and very mental. Well worth watching.
I’m so glad there are American folk who appreciate British comedy the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the same low-key British kitchness that runs through Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz that made Spaced such a cult hit with the very loyal fan-base it generated. If they want the appeal of those films (and the names attatched) to market a series of Spaced in America, they really should just import the original. After all, the original still has Pegg, Wright, Stevenson, Frost, Heap, Park etc still attatched..
It would be simply infuriating to watch people with little understanding of what made the series so compelling re-hash it for a mainstream market - the very reason Spaced has such a following is it’s ability to appeal to the niche areas of popular culture, whether it’s comic-book nerdary or robot wars enthusiasts (I gather they have a robot wars in the US which is infinitely more hardcore than the British version which is sometimes just a case of working out whose is least shit). My point is, by creating a clone with mainstream appeal - the very essence of the original show is lost. If they have to make this series, it could be called anything - to pretend it has anything to do with the original Spaced is foolish.
thanks for listening.
PS: (I also can whole-heartedly recommend Peep Show, Brass Eye, Black Books, Extras, Nathan Barley, and The Mighty Boosh - furthermore Dylan Moran’s stand-up work, as well as Bill Bailey’s, Eddie Izzard’s and the up-coming latest movie release from the team behind Spaced - ‘Paul’)
just flying the flag for British Comedy.
I think you’d be surprised how many Americans are hungry for British TV, man. With the availability of BBC America on a lot of cable providers here, we’re being opened up to a lot of stuff we wouldn’t see otherwise. They show a many more recent episodes of Dr. Who and Torchwood as well as some of the comedy mentioned in this article. Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim even took a chance, recently, on Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace, which I’m still on the fence about.