Across The Pond Sitcoms

Despite all the talk of England being the 51st State, the bemoaning of the loss of our cultural identity to the mass commercial armies of Starbucks and Subway marching through our High Streets, I’m not so convinced we’re ready to be considered for statehood just yet. In fact, the native inhabitants of the small island I inhabit occasionally joyously revel in declaring their independence from the looming shadow of our former colonial interests — normally just little things; Britpop vs. Grunge, Cricket vs. Baseball, Fish & Chips vs. Burger & Fries. These are the ways in which we stand apart from America and pull faces at it while enjoying our Blockbuster Videos and KFC.

One of our longest-standing cultural differences, however, can be found in the strangest yet most common battleground of the westernised world — the wonderful flickering screen of Television, and more specifically, the Situational Comedy.

In the world of Sitcoms, Britain and America are poles apart; American sitcoms are almost always character-led, long-running comedies, often with a number of long-term storylines which run throughout the season, which are based on real-life situations, feature a sing-a-long laugh track, and the comedy is usually slapstick/farce and witty dialogue/snappy one-liners. The prosecution calls ‘Becker’, ‘Cheers’, ‘Friends’, ‘Frasier’, ‘Spin City’, ‘Seinfeld’ etcetera to the stand.

British Sitcoms, on the other hand, tend to be ensemble-cast, short running comedies with very few ‘over-arching’ plot points, are often surreal, occasionally dispense with the laugh-track, and the comedy is often black, weird, and sometimes inexplicable.

I’m not saying that our way is better, however, before you all fire up your email clients and prepare to bombard me with hurtful remarks which include the word ‘Limey’. I like a lot of American Sitcoms. In fact, I’ll happily watch any of the shows I listed above, as well as ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ and that new Charlie Sheen thing that just started on British TV. I don’t have much time for Will & Grace though, but that’s just a personal thing.

Anyway, the point of all this mindless rambling is that I’m acutely aware that while we love to buy your sitcoms to show on our TV channels, the standard response to a successful British Sitcom by an American Network is to buy the rights, make a drastically inferior copy which immediately flops. As such, there’s a whole host of great Sitcoms that you unfortunate people might never have been properly exposed to; so in a series of these articles, I’m going to try and recommend some of the Best of British, and see if I can’t whet your appetite for a spot of transatlantic weirdness on your TV.

First out of the blocks: Spaced.

Over there in Americaland, you will have experienced the wave of publicity for a British zombie comedy film called Shaun of the Dead. Having seen it already twice, I can heartily recommend it as just the kind of brain-eating weirdness you might need to cleanse your palette of the nasty aftertaste of, say, Catwoman. It’s funny; there are zombies; go see it.

The reason I mention this is that the writer and star of Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg, is also the co-writer and co-star of Spaced; in fact, the origins of Shaun of the Dead come of Episode 3 of the first season of Spaced ‘Art’, which amongst other things, focuses on the Simon Pegg’s character hallucinating zombies all over the place after spending all night staying up playing Resident Evil. So, if you see Shaun and like it, making an effort to get hold of the two Spaced DVD’s that have been released (Season 1 and Season 2) is well worth your time.

On the surface, Spaced seems quite mundane. It’s the story of 3 flats (apartments to you US types) and the people who live in them. The central characters, comic artist Tim and journalist Daisy, agree to pretend to be a couple into order to get one of the apartments as they’ve both been thrown out of their old houses. The ground floor flat is rented by odd painter Brian, and the upstairs one by the landlady Marsha and her argumentative daughter Amber. Tim and Daisy also bring with them a friend or two each to round off the parade of oddballs passing through their shared building — Tim’s best friend Mike who is obsessed with the army, and was thrown out of the British version of the National Guard for stealing a Tank, his boss Bilbo who runs the comic shop where he works, and Daisy’s best friend Twist is the ultimate dizzy blonde and works in fashion.

Now I know, that doesn’t sound exactly like it’ll leave you rolling in the aisles with laughter, but hear me out. Because in Spaced, lurking beneath the Bed of Mundanity is the green grizzly monster of Weirdness; everything that happens in Spaced, and the majority of the characters who inhabit the flats above and below Tim & Daisy’s, seem slightly out of focus. We get weird dream sequences, flashbacks, and strangely implausible plots thrown into this everyday setting, and between them and the characters various neuroses, ‘hilarity ensues’, as they say. Spaced is also chock-a-block with movie references, quite often as complete throw-away jokes — so for us movie buffs, it allows you to be both entertained and feel intellectually superior for getting the joke at the same time, which is a great selling point for me.

It’s hard to put into words quite what makes Spaced so appealing — the dialogue is fantastically clever and funny, and (I think) infinitely quotable, as the long ‘quotes’ section at the back of this article will attest. The plots are never so weird as to make you scoff at them, but are just weird enough to make you wonder what Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson were on when they was writing it, and where you can get some yourself. It’s a strangely feel-good sitcom and for those of us who are in our twenty-somethings, shockingly easy to relate to quite how childish Tim and Daisy are despite being all properly grown up and everything. It also includes absolutely my favourite speech about love and life every to appear in a sitcom, which I’ve appended to the end of the quotes section so you can all read it and mock me.

In many ways, Spaced seems absolutely targeted at me and the other people of my generation; the twenty-something kids who haven’t really grown up yet, and come home from their jobs and play on their playstations, trying hard to forget the fact that as adults, they’re probably supposed to be doing something more responsible, like cleaning or balancing their chequebooks. That doesn’t mean you won’t find it funny otherwise, believe me, but there’s something quite nice about a TV show that treats us slightly geeky adults as the norm, rather than the throw-away comic relief.

On the downside, Spaced is quite British, I will admit. There are a couple of references to things in there (mainly other UK TV shows) that might pass American audiences by. But they are few and far between, so you don’t have to worry about sitting there and not ‘getting it’. I’ve also been told that Spaced is one of those shows that you either love or hate, and while I’ve never met anyone in the latter category I’m not saying you won’t be the first.

Apparently, the reason Spaced hasn’t appeared on US TV yet is due to some conflict regarding music rights (Spaced has some fantastic use of music as well — each episode opens with a different song, including the main theme from Resident Evil 2 for Episode 3); which is a real shame, because the trivialities of the music industry are preventing you all from seeing what might be the very best of the modern British Sitcoms in recent memory. So, if a slightly-weird comedy scattered with pop-culture references might be your cup of tea, you could do a lot worse than checking this show out.

Quotes

Tim [learning about Daisy]: You’re afraid of mice, and spiders, but oh so much greater is your fear that one day the two races will combine to form a super race of mice-spider and immobilise everyone in webs in order to steal cheese.
Daisy: I never said that.
Tim: Yeah, it’d be good though wouldn’t it?

Tim [talking to his ex]: You can’t dangle the carrot of possible reconciliation with me while riding some other donkey!

Brian : [enters, wearing a painting] Can I borrow a teabag?
Tim: [not looking at Brian] Only if you bring it back.
[sighs]
Tim: You can have a teabag, Brian, you can't borrow one.
[turns to look at him - pauses]
Tim: You've got some paint on you.
Brian: It’s a literal tribute to the self reflexivity of Rembrant.
Tim: Oh, did he like it?
Brain: No, He’s dead.
Tim: Bloody hell, that backfired then.

Daisy: You're up early.
Tim: Oh, I haven't been to bed. Me and Mike met up with these two Scottish guys in the pub and they gave us all this cheap speed.
Daisy: Oh Tim, that's so tacky.
Tim: Yeah I know, but y'know they were so nice. I think if we'd said no they'd have got offended and beaten us to death with a pool cue.

Daisy: So who was this girl then?
Tim: Her name was Cassandra, she was a psychic, she gave me her phone number...
[hands Daisy a piece of paper]
Daisy: That's OUR phone number.
Tim: Man, she's good.

Mike: In 1994 while on weekend manoeuvres in France, I commandeered a Chieftain tank without permission of my immediate superiors. I then attempted to invade Paris. However, en route I stopped off at Disneyland, or Eurodisney as it was then called, and was subsequently apprehended on Space Mountain.
TA Officer: Do you have any explanation as to why you might have done this?
Mike: Well Sir, at the time, I was suffering from serious emotional problems that had clearly affected my judgement. I had immersed myself in a fantasy world of my own creation and as a result I became very insular and uncommunicative.
TA Officer: Why do you think that was?
Mike: [shrugs] I dunno.

Mike: Wanna go into your party?
Tim: But they were playing 'The Timewarp'. I hate 'The Timewarp'.
Mike: Daisy likes it.
Tim: So what? I hate it. It's boil-in-the-bag perversion for sexually repressed accountants and first-year drama students with too many posters of Betty Blue, The Blues Brothers, Big Blue and Blue Velvet on their blue bloody walls.

Bilbo Bagshot: What about the Ewoks eh? They were rubbish. You don't complain about them.
Tim: Yeah but Ja Ja Binks makes the Ewoks look like... f*ckin'... Shaft.

Tim: [on the phone] What you doing playing army on a Sunday morning? You're missing "Grange Hill".
Mike: [on the other end of the phone] The TA is no game, Tim.
Tim: It isn't the TA, Mike, it's the Rough Ramblers.
Mike: [grunts] You're a civilian... you don't understand, you're thinking, "It's Sunday I'd rather be in bed."
Tim: And you're thinking, "It's Sunday, I'd rather be in 'Apocalypse Now'."

Tim: We can’t refer to each other with our real names so we’re going to have to use codenames. I’m Han, Mike, you’re Luke, [points at Daisy] you’re Leia, Brain, you’re Lando, Twist, you’re… Jabba.
Twist: Was Jabba the princess?
Everyone else: Yes!

[Daisy and Twist are dressing Mike up for a night clubbing – Mike is wearing a skintight hot pink top]
Mike: Tim, do you think this is too feminine?
Tim: Of course it’s too feminine, it’s a girls top.
Daisy: Don’t listen to him Mike, you look great.
Tim: Mike, don’t let them dress you up like a big c*ck.
Mike: I dressed up as an elderly Iranian woman once…
[Pause]
Daisy: Did you?
Mike: I didn’t have to…

[Tim is playing Tomb Raider 3]
Brian: What you playing?
Tim: Tomb Raider 3
Brian: She's downing.
Tim: Yeah.
Brain: Is that the point of the game?
Tim: Depends what mood you're in really.
Brian: What sort of mood are you in then?
Tim: Well, I got a letter from my ex-girlfriend this morning, three months too late, explaining why she dumped me; it was full of "You'll always be special" and "I'll always love you" platitudes designed to make me feel better while simultaneously appeasing her deep-seated sense of guilt for running off with a slimy little city boy called Dwayne, and destroying my faith in everything which is good and pure.
Brian: So it didn't really work then?
Tim: No, it made me wanna drown things!

Daisy: I split up with my boyfriend
Marsha: I can't say I'm surprised - I heard Tim shouting at you a couple of nights ago. I was shocked.
Daisy: Huh?
Marsha: 'You stupid Cow', something about a key. 'You can't shoot straight, you big-titted bitch'.
Daisy: No, no, that was Lara Croft.
Marsha: It sounded like Tim...

Tim: Life just isn't like the movies is it, you know? We're constantly lead to believe in resolution, in the re-establishment of the ideal status-quo, and it's - it's just not true. Happy endings are a myth, designed to make us feel better about the fact that life is just a thankless struggle.