Oh no. I feel like I say that far too often when reporting upcoming TV news, but I’m really worried this time. Fox has decided to remake the BBC series Spaced, which originally aired in 1999 and 2001 as two individual series. Jessica Stevenson created the series with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, who of course have since gone on to fame with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. (Stevenson also made a great cameo in Shaun of the Dead, as Shaun's old friend who arrives on a tank with the military). Stevenson and Pegg starred as two twenty-somethings who posed as a couple in order to rent an apartment, and eventually develop romantic tension (though it is never resolved).
Adam Barr, who was a producer on Will & Grace, will adapt the show for Fox; Variety reports that Pegg and Wright will be involved in some capacity, but no one is sure exactly how. If they’re smart they’ll either completely take over the thing or run away from it as quickly as possible.
Spaced could be the classic example of one of those shows that could never work in an American translation. The idea of a young man and woman living together and tentatively flirting with each other would result in a hasty one-night stand within the first three episodes, and the constant pop culture references and fantasy sequences (like an early version of Arrested Development, but sweeter) would be limited to easy jokes and a slower pace. Granted, we are in a post-Office era, when one show at least has proven that the cross-the-pond translation can be done. Spaced remained so precious, though, because it did its two seasons and quit, never having to string along the romance the way—ahem!—Jim and Pam are, telling its story and leaving the rest up to the audience’s imagination.
Spaced used to be available for viewing on the now-defunct tv-links.co.uk, and I’m not sure now where to tell you to run and catch it. But I simply can’t imagine they’ll manage to do justice to this one, the Office miracle aside. There isn’t a American Simon Pegg as far as I’m concerned, and Jessica Stevenson was so unconventional as a leading lady (she was a real size, and not America Ferrera glamour real size, but real sized), and so perfect, that I’m positive an American incarnation wouldn’t dare repeat it. Maybe I’ll be the one with egg on my face when Spaced: Seattle! becomes a critically-lauded success, but I’ll still miss Tim and Daisy and their crazy upstairs landlandy and the artist living in the basement and… yeah. Go see it and join in my mourning.
