The show’s scripts, especially their free-association-styled structure, and the characters that populated them would not have been quite the same, though, had it not been for the manner in which they were played. “If Spaced was made with six actors who had never worked together before,” Wright says, “it would have been completely different, no matter how good those scripts are.” Frost and Pegg’s off-screen friendship infused Mike and Tim’s on-screen one with a depth and believability that would have been hard to convey by hired actors, and the love for the characters Pegg, Hynes and co were playing, and their familiarity with them, imbued the show with a warmth, and a sense of inclusion, which set it on its way to cult fame.
Sidestepping the hassle of shooting a pilot, Spaced went straight into a full season, a luxury it is hard to imagine the show enjoying had it been made nowadays. “The first season was easier,” Wright reminisces, “because there was absolutely no expectation for the show. Nobody knew who we were, nobody knew what time it was going to go out, and nobody knew how it was gong to go down and so I directed it as if the series would be our first and last.” This freedom paid dividends, and Spaced was one of the freshest and most exciting shows of the Nineties, but this room for invention had an unwanted side effect. Channel 4 liked the show so much that it commissioned a second series before the first had even aired, but by the time the gang came to making it, the pressures stoked by fervent fan base anticipation were beginning to mount. For them, though, these pressures only pushed them to take the show one step further. “We hit the ground running with the first series,” Pegg explains in hindsight, “but by the second one we were gathering pace. We watched the first series and thought ‘this is what works, this is what people love, let’s try and do that more.’ That’s why the second series is more action packed.”
Action packed, fast paced, more densely loaded with references, and with a greater emotional punch underscoring it all, the second series took the template the group had fashioned with the first and simply raised the stakes. So much so that since it aired in 2001, fans have been clamouring for a third. Hynes, Wright and Pegg, though, have had other plans, ones that are distinctly Hollywood in their shape and scale for the latter two. Shaun Of The Dead and the scattershot but frequently hilarious Hot Fuzz were to follow for Wright and Pegg, but all three of the Spaced creators have decided that some things are best left as they are. Spaced perfectly captured the essence of the Nineties; it was a product of a time and place, for both audience and those making it, and to try to replicate that would almost be foolhardy, as McG and Fox have found to their peril (see ‘McSpaced’ for more).
As it stands, the show is nigh on perfect. A glorious cauldron of sci-fi love and geekiness, it is a show made by fans for the fans. While this is a claim that is all too often made, particularly with regard to Hollywood’s latest output, more often than not it’s little more than misdirection, a calculated decision intended to get the fanboys on side with the suits. With Spaced, though, it could not be more true.
This article originally appeared in the print edition of SciFiNow, issue 17 by Alasdair Morton. To buy a copy of the magazine or subscribe, go to www.imagineshop.com, or call our subscriptions hotline on +44 (0) 844 844 0245.
