Hacker Cinema
Spaced
1999 · TV series · 27 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes, Edgar Wright
Spaced: the anti-Friends, in that it examines the lives of common 20 somethings, but in a way that is more down to earth and realistic. Here we have Daisy and Tim; two 'young' adults with big dreams just trying to get by in this crazy world. They are thrown together in a common pursuit of tenancy, which they find by posing as a couple. The house has a landlady and an oddball artist living there. The series explores the ins and outs of London living.
2 positive5 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
While most would focus on Withnail and Danny's more on-the-nose moments, it's really Uncle Monty who steals every scene he features in.
In my opinion he is simply one of the most beautifully realised characters in all of comedy, his pompous and lugubrious Oxbridge eccentricities representing the last vestiges of a more genteel era that Withnail had just missed out on being a beneficiary of (Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can't).
I can't dispute that, in his impeccable introduction his most quotable moments (and delivery) arise, with the vainglorious delivery of his Hamlet monologue one of the most succinct and hilarious summations of a character in Cinema:
'It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, "I will never play the Dane."'
Ditto the magnificent upper-class eccentricity of his agrarian/sexual aspirations:
"I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is a certain je ne sais quoi - oh, so very special - about a firm, young carrot...Excuse me..."
However it is in his more maudlin moments where his dialogue - and the writing - truly shines, mourning the fin de siècle in his own way, with macabre little monologues hinting at his deep reserves of loss and despair.
'Oh my boys, my boys, we are at the end of an age! We live in a land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in, shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour, and here we are, we three; perhaps the last island of beauty... in the world'
My favourite however, has to be the little appendix to his anecdotes of Oxford and his 'sensitive crimes' in a punt with his poetry-reciting lover:
"I sometimes wonder where Norman is now. Probably wintering with his mother in Guildford. A cat, rain, Vim under the sink, and both bars on. But old now, old. There can be no true beauty without decay."
Sheer brilliance, with its fingerprints all over British Comedy almost 40 years on - with particular reference to the likes of Armando Ianucci, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, David Mitchell/Robert Webb, and Richard Ayoade, covering movies like 'Submarine' and TV like 'Peep Show' and 'Spaced' most notably.
One of my favorite jokes from the British sitcom "Spaced":
Daisy: [answering phone] Hello? Oh, hi, Mike. Yeah, he's here, I'll just get him.
[to Tim]
Daisy: It's your boyfriend.
Tim: He's not my boyfriend.
[picks up phone]
Tim: Hi babe.
Mike: Hello Timmy!
Tim: Where are you?
Mike: Err, Sheffield.
Tim: What are you doing in Sheffield?
Mike: Fell asleep on the tube.
Tim: The tube doesn't go to Sheffield, Mike.
Mike: Yeah, I know. I, uh, must have changed at King's Cross.
This kind of thing was referenced, comedically in the UK TV series Spaced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfSndZPynQk
Reminds me of the hardcore raver Tyres from the sitcom Spaced (genius British comedy):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfSndZPynQk
Saying that I have had a similar thing with tracks that have police sirens in them when listening in the car, it takes a moment to realise it isn't an actual emergency vehicle.
Sometimes that's the case but it varies from show to show. IIRC the House of Cards intro goes on for more than 2 minutes. Game of Thrones isn't exactly quick either. Where as some older shows, eg UK sitcom from the 90s, "Spaced", only lasted a couple of seconds (literally).
If there is any correlation I've observed, it's more to do with the genre of show and it's running time.
Yeah I forgot about things like spaced. I just like my comedy a bit more cutting witty obscene bizarre etc rather than "This is a funny situation isn't it". The IT crowd has been a mixed bag for me, moments of genius mixed with whole episodes of 'this is a sitcom for really old/slow people who need their jokes explained over an entire episode'.
It's possible. My English teacher in junior year absolutely was. I went in the first day, tried to pick a snarky fight with him over James Joyce, and then stayed after class to talk to him about Ulysses and Nabakov's Lolita. (Ulysses is one of my favorite novels.) By the end of the week, he'd recommended two bands to me that I fell in love with; before winter, he lent me his copy of 69 Love Songs, which profoundly affected how I looked at music.
Later, he was the reason I befriended a kid I'd been at odds with for years, an arrogant film buff. When we started to have extended discussions covering literature, cinema, and music, I started looking for some of the films they were mentioning, and in doing so became close friends with the film kid. It led to one of the best summers of my life, driving around the state in his Wrangler to get a copy of Spaced.
(Meanwhile, the class we met in was a half-year course filled with a ton of kids with short attention spans, and he managed to get us to read something like 7-8 books and a ton of short stories, and crammed us with 5 excellent films in between.)
How you isolate people like that and identify them, I don't know. They exist, though.
(Game program? What do you mean?)