Great King Bowser said:
So erm, when was Spaced made?
Why have I never heard of, or seen it?
Was it shown on British TV? Damnit, I need to watch more TV these days...
SPACED season 1 came out in 1999, SPACED season 2 aired in 2001.
Most of the british comedy here in the US is old stuff... people still go on everywhere about Red Dwarf and that stuff started airing here in 1989. Then you have fans of "Are you being served" ('72?) and other shows from the mid 80's (Blackadder and such). Now with cable and BBC America and other channels, there's a much larger influx of british TV.
Back in the days when PBS was the only way to see anything, KTEH in the SF Bay Area was THE station to watch. They were the first to show "The Prisoner", "Red Dwarf", the first few seasons of "Dr. Who", "Blakes 7", etc.
Back when season 2 of SPACED was on air (days before episode 4 would air), I discovered the show and read threads with all the spoilers. It sounded incredible... all these references to stuff people here all loved. I asked all my sources for british stuff, no one had a clue for what I was talking about. I know no one showed it on TV here yet... so I asked a friend who through his love of certain Sci-Fi shows was able to get episodes of those shows on his private FTP not shown yet in the US as well as other british stuff ("Blackadder Back and Forth" within 12 hours of it's broadcast in the UK on Sky One...)
He had no idea nor did his friend, but his friend heard of it, so as a favor to me, they taped an episode (2.4)... and liked it enough for another... and another. Then he ordered the season 1 dvd and watched all of season 1 back to back twice in a row, told us how amazing it was and then shared that with us too. It was something fresh and cool and new... every fan of british stuff we showed it to loved it. Somehow I hooked up Tycho from Penny Arcade and him and his wife loved it immensely. She would tell people to check this thing out, start an episode on the computer to watch without any explanation... and then leave the house. Like... drive off to the store or something... while they sat there without a clue of what they were watching.
I showed it to my friend who gave me Dr. Who and anime in the mid 80's and now works for the local PBS station, KTEH (mentioned above). He loved it and they went after it (because if they picked it up, every PBS station in the country would follow suit...). We found out that Bravo Canada had just snagged it in a 4 year North American exclusive contract.... which means Bravo USA could show it. Every time we contacted Bravo USA, they claimed they were a different company than Bravo Canada and had no idea what we were talking about. We organized a e-mail assault from
Nick Lee's SPACED OUT fansite, as well as had everyone who Nick knew that was involved in the rights contact them to get them to realize what they had so they'd air it... and they finally did. They aired 2 episodes on 2 friday nights at midnight EST without any promos or mention of it on their website, then claimed poor ratings/no one watched it, so they pulled it. Even bigger bitching campaign, and almost a year later, they showed the whole series twice... 2-3 episodes per week at 4am EST, but they DID show it. Two runs from start to finish and then nothing.
When I went to E3 after we couldn't get the rights in 2001 (or was it 2002?), I teased some of the british game studios in Kentia on when the SPACED game was coming, and they'd all laugh and said "Hey, if you love SPACED, you NEED to check out 'Black Books'!"... everyone from the UK I spoke to kept saying that. I told my friend from KTEH one day that they should try to get Black Books... that very night I told him at the office, I was at a friend's watching Comedy Central and they ran an ad for this new british series they were going to start airing next week... Black books! I watched it on there, took a little getting used to but loved it. I think it did poorly, though, as the only time they've shown season 2 was at the monday night 11pm-1am airings of shows. Season 3 I've seen online and thought was hilarious.
Now with all the channels, there's so much great british stuff airing... Father Ted, Coupling, Spooks, etc.
At San Diego Comic Con, I went down not so much for the Shaun of the Dead screening (where I did sit in front of Ken Foree in the VIP section, which was nice), but to hang out with Simon & Edgar for a while and get my SPACED dvd's signed. We chatted about Simon's role in "Band of Brothers" and other stuff.
My top 3 that I'd highly recommend to anyone to see are
SPACED,
Black Books (don't know if Comedy Central will air it again), and
Spooks (shown on A&E as
MI-5). I'd also suggest "Keen Eddie", especially to anyone who's a fan of "Due South", but that was a US production shot in the UK...
