Spaced at 20: How we made a British cult classic

Twen­ty years after it first aired, Spaced, the short-lived sit­com that chart­ed the often sur­re­al mis­ad­ven­tures of a group of slack­ers liv­ing in North Lon­don, stands as arguably the defin­ing zeit­geist-cap­tur­ing com­e­dy of its day. Here, the show’s co-cre­ators and stars Jes­si­ca Hynes and Simon Pegg and direc­tor Edgar Wright come togeth­er to reflect on the mak­ing of a British cult classic.

Jes­si­ca Hynes (Daisy Stein­er): Simon and I had worked togeth­er twice before we start­ed writ­ing Spaced. We knew we worked well togeth­er and a Pro­duc­er even sug­gest­ed we come up with an idea for a show. I thought ​‘I’m not going to let this oppor­tu­ni­ty go’ – so I sat down and tried to con­ceive something.

Simon Pegg (Tim Bis­ley): A pro­duc­er attached to the Para­mount Com­e­dy Chan­nel said, ​‘We’d like to make a vehi­cle for you and Jess.’ We respond­ed pos­i­tive­ly but said we’d like to write it. It was a very exper­i­men­tal, fer­tile time for com­e­dy. We didn’t even have to do a pilot, we just went straight to series on Chan­nel 4 after we cooked up the premise. We want­ed to hang the whole thing on a very con­ven­tion­al sit­com trope: the friends-pre­tend­ing-to-be-a-cou­ple-to-get-the-flat thing – and from that, we want­ed to take it all over the place.

Edgar Wright (Direc­tor): I’d worked with Jess sep­a­rate­ly on the first thing I ever did on TV, which was a David Wal­liams and Matt Lucas show called Mash and Peas. I met Simon through Matt and Dave because David and Simon had gone to Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty togeth­er. Simon and Jess made the TV show Asy­lum and I had been Direct­ing it. It was very clear they had amaz­ing chemistry.

JH: I was inspired by things like The Young Ones and Girls on Top – anar­chic, orig­i­nal stuff, writ­ten by the comics. That was my bench­mark. At the time I start­ed writ­ing I was 24 and had lived in Lon­don for eight years. There’s some­thing about your ear­ly twen­ties where things are mag­i­cal and you over­come things because you’re young. I want­ed to write some­thing that reflect­ed the inten­si­ty, char­ac­ters and peo­ple in my world and make some­thing that reflect­ed my generation.

SP: Jess and I were lament­ing the fact that there weren’t any sit­coms about peo­ple our age that were writ­ten by peo­ple our age. It was all Cou­pling and Game On and shows writ­ten by 50 year old men that said noth­ing to us about our lives. By that time, Jess and I were bosom buds so we set about writ­ing the show.

JH: Mar­sha [Julia Deakin] was based on a land­la­dy that had lived above me and she had a daugh­ter who she argued with con­stant­ly. She became a kind of amal­ga­ma­tion of a lot of the strong women of my child­hood – dry, wit­ty sin­gle mums who liked a glass of vino. Her world was real­ly the world in which Spaced emanat­ed from.

SP: I was Tim. He was a pro­jec­tion of who I was at that time. I skate­board­ed – I didn’t work in a com­ic shop but I sure would have loved to. I spent a lot of time watch­ing TV and smok­ing weed in our flat in Ken­tish Town, which I shared with Nick Frost [Mike] and Michael Smi­ley [Tyres]. Tim and Daisy were our own avatars really.

JH: It was a case of look­ing at what come­di­ans were out there and think­ing about who would be the best for each role. Mike was a char­ac­ter we had seen Nick per­form before, so he came into the show ful­ly formed.

SP: Mike was a char­ac­ter that Nick did for shits and gig­gles before he was an actor. It was his take on this ter­ri­to­r­i­al army guy. I said to him, ​‘Do you want to use that char­ac­ter and be in the show?’ At the time he was a wait­er at Chiq­ui­tos. He’d had a go at stand up but found it a lit­tle bit like jump­ing in at the deep end – so he agreed to come onboard.

JH: Mark Heap [Bri­an] was so per­fect. He brought this incred­i­bly dif­fer­ent, bril­liant ener­gy to Bri­an and did it with this real ner­vous­ness which defined him. I can’t imag­ine him being played any oth­er way. Katie Carmichael [Twist] is some­one who got me into doing the sketch show Six Pairs of Pants which is how I met Simon and how this whole thing came about so I real­ly want­ed to get her involved. There was this qui­et, twee char­ac­ter he some­times did – so I thought I’d write that. She became a lit­tle spiky and edgy.

SP: Tyres was [Michael] Smi­ley. Pri­or to becom­ing a stal­wart of the stand-up cir­cuit, Michael was a cycle couri­er and a raver and lived an insane life where he was deliv­er­ing parcels by day and eat­ing shit tonnes of ecsta­sy all night. He could play that char­ac­ter with the utmost authen­tic­i­ty – every repet­i­tive sound he heard, he would imme­di­ate­ly start dancing.

EW: I remem­ber going to Jess’ house and Simon was there and they were writ­ing. I’d drawn sto­ry­boards into the mar­gins of the script that had ideas of how you could do dif­fer­ent things. I think I added a lot of visu­al ele­ments to the first series and then Simon and Jess wrote a lot of that stuff into the sec­ond series. There were lots of touch points: The Simp­sons, The Young Ones, Reg­gie Per­rin, which is a show that not many peo­ple give enough cred­it to in terms of whim­si­cal dream sequences. That was a show I drew on for Spaced. After doing stuff for the BBC where I was like the odd-kid out, it was such a breath of fresh air being on Spaced and work­ing on some­thing where the net­work didn’t both­er us at all.

SP: We didn’t have any notes. It was incred­i­ble actu­al­ly. We were left alone. Edgar’s style and sen­si­bil­i­ty just fit like a glove. I remem­ber look­ing at his notes from the first episode and think­ing, ​‘Fuck­ing hell… it’s like he can see into our minds!’ – and yet it was noth­ing Jess or I could have ever artic­u­lat­ed in any way.

JH: There were only ever allu­sions to drug use – even with smok­ing dope. I look back and realise the lev­el of sub­ver­sive­ness that was inher­ent in the very casu­al way we explored drug use. I didn’t ques­tion it because that was my expe­ri­ence through­out my whole life – it wasn’t some­thing I thought was sen­sa­tion­al or unusual.

EW: I was more of a drinker, but that was some­thing they were very keen on doing: show­ing the drug expe­ri­ence with no moral­is­tic slap­down at the end of an episode. What I like about Spaced is that it doesn’t make a big deal about it – it just is. They smoke weed, go out on ecsta­sy, have a great time and noth­ing bad hap­pens. It was so mat­ter-of-fact. You’ve seen the oth­er ver­sion of those scenes ad-nau­sea. I feel like Spaced made it a bit more normal.

SP: There’s noth­ing worse than peo­ple guess­ing what sub­cul­tures are like and get­ting it wrong. The whole club­bing episode was all about how you can go out, take ecsta­sy and not die, because all the mes­sages relat­ed to drugs were always based on some puni­tive BS where some­thing ter­ri­ble hap­pens. We want­ed to show that no, you could actu­al­ly go out, come back alive and have a real­ly great time, with no moral judg­ment either way.

EW: I look back on it incred­i­bly fond­ly because it’s one of the rare times where the show and social­is­ing just seemed to blend togeth­er. I miss that, in a way. Every­one gets grown up with lives and kids and Spaced was prob­a­bly the last time where we would actu­al­ly shoot togeth­er and all hang out, go to par­ties and do fun, stu­pid stuff – then we had to be grown ups. In a weird way, I think that’s one of the rea­sons why there was no series three – there’s an ele­ment where life got in the way and we couldn’t real­ly fab­ri­cate being those peo­ple anymore.

SP: It would have liked to have done a third sea­son and end­ed it there. It would have led to a much more sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion. I think Tim and Daisy would have final­ly admit­ted their affec­tions for each oth­er and act­ed upon that – even if there was a post-script that said they went out for three years and broke up. There is that curse of the ​‘two series’ thing in the UK. Just because Fawl­ty Tow­ers did it every­body thinks that’s what you should do – I don’t think that’s nec­es­sar­i­ly true.

JH: We had loads of ideas. Hope­ful­ly we would have just tried to make it big­ger and bet­ter. It would only ever have been about how the char­ac­ters con­nect­ed and how they would have pro­gressed. I think it would have been a lot of fun.

EW: I feel like good work finds its audi­ence. It might not be on the day it was trans­mit­ted, it might not be the open­ing week­end of the film but some­thing good will find its audi­ence even­tu­al­ly and that’s what hap­pened with Spaced – and because there’s only two series, it nev­er out­stayed its wel­come. Peo­ple nev­er got a chance to get sick of it so I think a lot of view­ers feel the same way I do about it: that it was just this per­fect­ly formed lit­tle bauble that was on your TV for two series, didn’t out­stay its wel­come and end­ed on a beau­ti­ful final note.

SP: I think because it cap­tures a spe­cif­ic moment in time and space, that’s prob­a­bly added to the atti­tude peo­ple have towards it. I look back and miss the igno­rance we had – I have a pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny now and it’s fuck­ing hard. To go back and think how Jess and I blind­ly went for it and were allowed to do that – that isn’t how it works.

JH: I’m very hap­py that peo­ple still love it because I cer­tain­ly do. I still get let­ters: ​‘We fell in love to this show’ or ​‘It’s our wed­ding anniver­sary and when we first met we watched Spaced and we love it’. It makes me feel great because that was absolute­ly the inten­tion and it makes me so hap­py to know that it still gets that kind of love and appreciation.