When I first heard the news of an American Spaced remake, I was outraged, just based on principle. How dare McG touch one of my favorite shows of all time? How dare he even entertain the very notion? "For shame, McG," I thought, "For shame." I then proceeded to the nearest Best Buy, where I collected all the copies of Charlie's Angels and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and set them alight. I was then banned from entering any Best Buy ever again, but I think I made my point clear.Spaced director Edgar Wright recently updated his blog with his own thoughts on this situation and now I'm even more upset. The gist is this: McG and FOX are planning to remake Spaced. Director Edgar Wright and writers/stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson were not contacted before the decision was made to pursue an American version. They will not be involved in the same fashion as the way Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant worked with NBC's adaptation of their creation, The Office.
It's almost heartbreaking to think about how the production company just handed over this baby to FOX without consulting the creators first. I mean, to put so much work into this thing and then have complete strangers take over and pull things in a completely direction? Judging by the general buzz across the Internet, the Spaced fans aren't happy either. Just check out the links in Wright's blog. Nope. Not happy at all.
I'm also confused as to how McG and company plan to interpret this for an American audience in the late 2000s. Spaced captured that bridge between the 1990s and 2000s so beautifully... The techno/rave scene, the 90s potheads, the aftermath of Phantom Menace. Do they plan to just make a sitcom that references the hell out of pop culture? Unless they find a way to add something new to the mix without ruining the magic of Spaced, I don't see the point in a remake. Yeah, yeah. I know The Office found huge success here, but I'm still convinced it was a fluke.
All right, so in case you haven't heard already, Spaced is a stellar show about childish twenty-somethings and their crazy antics. It's directed by Wright, who also directed and co-wrote Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz with Pegg. You may recognize Stevenson from her minor role as Yvonne in Shaun and the film Confetti. Nick Frost, who played Ed in Shaun, is also in the show as Pegg's mustachioed BFF. Again, this program is one of my favorites. It's easily in the top three with The Office and Green Wing (God forbid America try to remake Green Wing). Bravo and Trio aired it for a while and then BBC America took over. I'm not entirely sure if it's still re-running anymore, because I bought a region-free player to watch the DVDs a few years ago. Even after watching the series a couple hundred times, I still manage to laugh out loud a little more with each viewing. Have I made it terribly clear that I'm madly in love with this show?
I encourage everyone to watch Spaced and hopefully fall in love with it the way I did. And if we're super-lucky, the American version will never see the light of day. That way, everyone is happy! Well, everyone but McG.
Here's one of my favorite moments from Spaced... By the way, I've tested this theory and it's totally true.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-05-2007 @ 2:41PM
George said...
If you'd prefer the glass-half-full approach: the American production team has graciously elected not to taint Wright, Peggers, Frosty et al's careers with the stigma of this ill-conceived project's inevitable failure.
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11-05-2007 @ 2:56PM
Fred Mertz said...
The problem with this remake is that Spaced was about as "low concept" a sitcom as you could imagine. Try to describe to someone what it is about and you find yourself describing a very generic sounding, turn of the millenium slacker show. That show's success was all about pitch-perfect writing and acting. The Office is very "high concept" and that concept is so strong that it weathered translation (after a rough start). I'm guessing it will be Coupling redux.
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11-05-2007 @ 3:54PM
LeDiva said...
"(God forbid America try to remake Green Wing)"
It's called "Scrubs".
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11-05-2007 @ 4:00PM
Annie Wu said...
@ LeDiva:
NO. HOW DARE YOU.
This is the part where my skin suddenly goes green and my pants turn purple.
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11-05-2007 @ 4:15PM
Aberdeen said...
George, oo, that's good...
Gods, this is all so depressing.
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11-05-2007 @ 4:52PM
Karen said...
This is SUCH AN OUTRAGE.
Annie, thanks for that clip! It's from an episode I've not seen yet, and I've been sitting at my desk, replaying it, as I clamp my hands over my guffawing mouth and stamp my feet on the floor.
God, I love this show.
And yes: The Office, Spaced, and Green Wing--to which I would add only Shameless. I've watched the 7 episodes on my series 1 DVDs about 17 times now.
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11-05-2007 @ 5:36PM
Greg said...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. There already was an American version of this show: it was called "Ned and Stacey" and starred Debra Messing (pre-Will & Grace) and Thomas Hayden Church (post-Wings). It sucked hard.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0112093/
That said, it's exactly how I picture this bastardization is going to be, and that makes me a sad panda.
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11-05-2007 @ 5:54PM
VJM said...
I guess we'll have to stop watching Bionic Woman and Battlestar Galactica, since they did the same thing to the people involved in the originals of those. I didn't see much outrage then.
Note to "creators": if you don't own the show's concept, then you really are SOL.
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11-05-2007 @ 6:02PM
Joey Geraci said...
At least with Battlestar Galactica, no one in their right mind is saying that the original was any feat of brilliance. The best thing it's creator's did was not work with the creators of the original version.
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11-07-2007 @ 3:13AM
flotsky said...
I never got into Green Wing as I just saw it as a shoddy rip-off of some sketches in "Jam", even down to having some of the same actors.
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11-14-2007 @ 6:32PM
Kazz said...
Liar. If you loved Spaced, you'd realize they're twenty-somethings, not thirty-somethings. Heck, they celebrate Daisy's twenty-second birthday in the second-to-finale.
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11-14-2007 @ 6:33PM
Kazz said...
Okay, now I'm the idiot. Twenty-SIXTH.
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11-14-2007 @ 8:17PM
Annie Wu said...
I had the whole "approaching 30" thing in my head and that somehow came out as "30-something". I guess neither of us are real fans.
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11-29-2007 @ 10:23AM
Aniya said...
you know what?
Instead of remaking spaced for us americans, the BBCA needs to release it on DVD for us because i dont feel like buying a multi region dvd player.
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