For this second series, cartoonist-cum-fantasy-artist Tim (Big Train's Simon Pegg) starts off still working in the Fantasy Bazarr comic book shop with Bilbo (Black Books' Bill Bailey) before getting the sack and his flatmate and wannabe journalist Daisy (The Royle Family's Jessica Stevenson) has only just returned from a long trip to Asia attempting to find herself and no sooner does she get home than she's already being hunted down by some Matrix-style men.

For those who missed the first series, despite many repeats of both on E4, circumstances brought this odd couple together in a cafe, which led to them posing as a professional couple in order to get 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 aforementioned sketch show Big Train) and 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, the off-the-wall Twist (Liverpool 1's Katy Carmichael) and "weapons expert" territorial army man Mike (Nick Frost), plus movie references aplenty including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Star Wars and a Pulp Fiction spoof so clever that it was nearly half-over before I realised.

It took me a while to get into the first series, but with the second one things clicked much more quickly and highlights from this one include Daisy's return after her trip, both Daisy and Tim's visit to the Jobcentre only to get turned down in the most demeaning ways possible, Tim's affliction and dispute with George Lucas over Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the re-appearance of Tyres, the 'Robot Wars' competition, Tim nearly getting the very job and the girl of his dreams, the episode that starts with the ending and the penultimate episode which ended with yet another homage to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, but which was talked over in the most irritating way by the Channel 4 continuity announcer trying to do an impression of Yoda(!)

And that was half the problem when it was broadcast and why I'm so glad we now have this DVD. So many episodes were talked over or had the excellent closing credits squashed up or cut off in their prime, all of which made me want to see those in charge of this decision publicly executed - and add to that the stupid woman who dumped Right To Reply after 18 years onscreen.

Spaced is 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.

The Matrix - it's enough to send you to sleep.

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.

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 Thunderbirds and This Morning, 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.

Tim works out his problems with George Lucas over
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

The extras, all in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen, feature Cast and Crew Biographies for not only the director and producer, but also the characters themselves which is quite a novel twist. The Trailers section consists of trailers for the first four episodes, plus specific ones for Daisy and Tim used before the second series began. I'm not actually sure if they made any more for the last three episodes because it's only nearer the start of a series than a channel will go to such trouble, leaving the following to pick up on the rest. The ones that we do get here are classics though.

There are 13 minutes of Out-takes and 18 Deleted Scenes (totalling 18 minutes), each with an optional audio commentary track explaining why they were left out. The Raw Footage is 6½ minutes of work-in-progress footage on set as it's being filmed and Daisy Does Elvis is a one-minute excerpt of Jessica Stevenson singing "Teddy Bear".

In addition to a Photo Library, finally comes the feature-length Audio Commentary from stars Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson and director Edgar Wright.

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 are silent, but contain subtle animation.

Finally, though, comes one of the best extras: an extra set of subtitles known as the "Homage-o-meter" which point out every single one of the film and TV references through the entire series, some of which I got and many of which I didn't, plus even some references back to the first series.

An old friend returns.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002

The following is a list of all the Spaced material online to date :

2004	Shaun of the Dead
2004	Spaced: Definitive Collector's Edition
2002	Edgar Wright interview (director)
2002	Spaced: Series 2
2001	Spaced: Series 1

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: