Dom Robinson reviews
Spaced:
The Complete First Series
Distributed by
VCI
- Cert:
- Cat.no: VCD 0110
- Running time: 170 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 35 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Stereo)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English for the hard of hearing
- Widescreen: 1.77:1
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Trailers, Out-takes, Deleted Scenes, Cast and Crew Biographies,
Audio Commentary
Director:
ProducerS:
Nira Park and Gareth Edwards
Screenplay:
Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson
Music
Cast:
Tim Bisley: Simon Pegg
Daisy Steiner: Jessica Stevenson
Marsha Klein: Julia Deakin
Brian Topp: Mark Heap
Twist Morgan: Katy Carmichael
Mike Watt: Nick Frost
Willow Pearl: Sarah Alexander
Tony Harping: David Walliams
Dizzy Daz: David Cann
If you can understand Spaced,
it probably isn't for you, because the off-the-wall story of the characters
in this series doesn't make any sense at all, but is still very enjoyable.
Cartoonist-cum-fantasy-artist Tim (Faith in the Future's Simon Pegg),
works in the Fantasy Bazarr comic book shop with Bilbo (Bill Bailey)
and has been thrown out of
the house he shared with his girlfriend Sarah and wannabe journalist Daisy
(The Royle Family's
Jessica Stevenson) has voluntarily left the house she shared with some
dope-f(r)iends. Circumstances bring them together in a cafe, which leads to
them posing as a professional couple in order to get them a flat together,
despite the landlady being the drunk Marsha Klein (Julia Deakin)
and the building containing the weird Brian (Mark Heap, who appeared with
Simon Pegg in the sketch show Big Train) who maintains
he is also an artist, but one dealing in works that reflect pain and
aggression.
Throw in a number of other characters including regular best-friends for
Daisy and Tim respectively, Twist (Liverpool 1's Katy Carmichael) and "weapons expert"
Mike (Nick Frost), plus movie references aplenty including
2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Blair Witch
Project and The Matrix and it doesn't all quite gel together, but
then it's not really meant to.
I didn't quite get into this programme first time round, but learned of the
DVD around the time when the series was repeated (Feb 2001) and gave it a
second chance with the sixth, clubbing, episode. Then things began to click.
It's not a laugh-out-loud funny sitcom, but clearly draws you in with its
style including the use of cut-scenes spliced in all over the place, such as
in the final episode when an argument between Daisy and Tim is interspliced
with footage of two
Tekken
characters slugging it out.
There's no problems with the encoding of the picture on this DVD, although
it does have a slightly washed-out and blurry look to it throughout. However,
that is down to the way it was filmed. It's also presented in the original
anamorphic widescreen 16:9 ratio, as shown on Channel 4 and the average
bitrate is a 5.31Mbs, occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s.
Spaced doesn't have a theme tune of its own, but it's populated by
snippets of different songs - almost all of which are named in the subtitles -
and other programmes' theme tunes, including Murder She Wrote and a
remix of The A-Team, plus various audio swipes that accompany visual
cues. Call me a purist, but if someone had remixed the entire soundtrack into
Dolby Digital 5.1 it would have been quite a perfect treat.
The extras, all in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen, feature Cast and Crew Biographies for not only the major
cast members, the director and producers, but also the characters themselves
which is quite a novel twist. The Trailers section consists of two
teasers, the trailers used to specifically advertise episodes 3, 4, 5 and 6
and a near-two-minute trailer for Series 2, which you'll be seeing regularly
of Channel 4 if you're reading this review in the week of February 19th-23rd
2001.
There are nine minutes of Out-takes and thirteen Deleted Scenes,
each with an optional audio commentary track explaining why they were left out
although the booklet comments on this too. Finally, like
The League of Gentlemen
there's an Audio Commentary track from Simon Pegg, Jessica
Stevenson and Edgar Wright which runs for the full length of the
series. I hope more programmes do this in future.
The disc contains five chapters per episode, subtitles in English for the
hard of hearing which capture just about all of the dialogue and the menus
contain music plus subtle animation which changes colour. On my Creative Dxr2
DVD-ROM player, the menus didn't appear most of the time (I also had a similar
problem with
Dogma),
but it worked fine on a
Playstation 2.
FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
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OVERALL
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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001
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DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
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