The Magic of Spaced
In early 2004, when I was four months pregnant, I ran an FP event for Pegg and Frost, who spent much of their time trying to name my unborn child ‘Simon Nick’ or ‘Nick Simon’. Twenty-plus years later, with Isaac now working for FP himself (and turning into Tim Bisley, as does tend to happen), I remind him of this story and he chuckles.
But rewatching Spaced recently, I was stuck by how wonderfully innocent it is.
Scene: the late nineties. Story: friends and family, no internet, no smartphones, no Social Media. Landlines, and letters coming the post. A typewriter, a physical portfolio. Days when you could get a job by going into a temp agency, could sign on without fear (unless you took the piss), or find a flat by reading the paper (never mind how much one cost). Days when the world wasn’t on fire, when we weren’t saturated by (mis)information, and algorithms, and AI, and advertising, and endless bloody spam. Days when everything was so much smaller and easier to handle. Days when our biggest worry was the axe-robot in the garage, or who’d said what to whom, in the little local comic shop.
Days when we had a little local comic shop.
To me, Spaced still feels contemporary. I remember watching both series (they were a handful of years ago, surely?), falling in love with the characters, and recognising every one of them. We’ve all met (or been) both Tim and Daisy, we’ve known a Brian, and a Tyres, and a Marsha, and more than one Mike. We’ve had friends who are family, and sooner or later, we’ve gone down to Thresher for the weekly shop.
And we’ve all had those epic crossroads, like the day when Marsha was knocked off her bike (one of my favourite scenes), or when Mike fell out of the tree. We’ve wondered what our lives would have gone, had we zigged and not zagged.
Watching it again, realising with a shock how old it really is and how much things have changed, I thought back to a phrase used by Natasha Pulley in Watchmaker (read this!), the one about the pennies on your chest. It’s the same as the boiling frog: you know you’re too hot, that those pennies are too heavy, but it’s been so gradual. Where did those years go? How has everything changed so much? It’s only when you look back that you understand how much time has passed, and that these things aren’t contemporary, not any more. They’re snapshots of a world gone.
And yet.
Leaving aside the issue of some actors really not covering themselves in glory (cough), Spaced still occupies a special place in our hearts. It’s all those memories – of pubbing with our mates, of getting munted in nightclubs or tangled in relationship issues. It’s conversations while high as a kite, the friends we love and miss and the times that went with them. It’s silent gunfights (not just for the boys, thank you), and memes before memes existed, quoting endless one-liners at each other, then falling around.
Isaac observed, very astutely, that the whole script is made up of these. Everything’s either the set-up or the gag, and he’s not wrong.
Sure as every odd-numbered Star Trek movie is shit.
Life may have changed, but that just makes the little things matter even more. And some stories remain contemporary, just because of the echoes that they leave, footprints across our hearts.
Reading: Just finished the audiobook of Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, and honestly, I wasn’t sure. It feels like a Marmite book, you either love it or hate it, and I could absolutely see why people would do both or either. Yes, it’s gentle and dreamlike and beautiful, and yes, it’s tedious and shapeless and actually quite annoying. Five stars and one, and probably not one to read again.
Watching: As well as Spaced, Robin of Sherwood, which is another series that comes with a very powerful set of memories. While it was on the box in the early Eighties, it still feels like our years on the Vike, particularly with the smaller, indie groups who weren’t as hot on their authenticity and just wanted to run around in the woods and have fun.
Playing: not much, because Christmas and I’m still off the PlayStation. But we returned to our Al-Qadim yesterday, complete with new dice gaol.
And, no it didn't make them behave!
