Happy Daiz

Spaced has its 10th birthday this week. The unparalleled, most brilliant, genius television show ever created in the history of this universe... without a hint of hyperbole.

Spaced makes other sitcoms seem like someone is using a paintball gun to permanently damage your kidneys by shooting you a million times, from the front. It makes other sitcoms seem like a never ending sweaty room full of baked-on, caked-on, greasy dishes to wash up that goes FOREVER. It makes other sitcoms seem like you are humiliating yourself at a job interview.

Wittier than Bill Bailey and Ricky Jervais put together. More random hilarity than David Walliams could conceive. More quotable than Anchorman. More likeable characters than The Goodies. More intertextual references than Shrek (or as channel4 says, more pop culture references than you can shake a light sabre at).

And I'm not the only one besotted by this TV brilliance. This week other (more serious) writers have been inspired to opine ad nauseum about just how fantastic it is - NME and The Guardian for a start.

In the heady days of Astolat Manor, Spaced was a Tuesday night ritual. In the pokey flat above the pub in Waterloo, Spaced was the room to breathe and the post-work tonic. In the Kilburn sharehouse, Spaced was my educational gift to the flatmates (just down the road from the pub where they did the shooting of the pub scenes, where we turned down getting pissed with David Soul for a lamb roast!).

Spaced is a love affair that has stood the test of time. Boyfriends have gone (and a divorce like settlement over who owned the VHS tapes did ensue) and come and gone again (possibly because he couldn't see what I thought was so incredible about this show), but Spaced stays true.

This kind of show makes you want to buy a miniature schauzer. To smoke a big fat doobie on the way to a pub in Camden. To dance cheesy soldier like moves to a remix of The A-Team theme song. To eat too many twiglets and punch a performance artist in the face. To have a slow motion gunfight in a back alley with teenage thugs. To build a robot and join an illegal robot fight club. Oops, I'm not allowed to talk about that...

If you have seen Spaced, and you feel like I do, then we are destined to be friends. If you have not seen Spaced, then I don't know why you are still reading this when the 3 disc box set is such a reasonable price on Amazon (or other cheaper, less legal avenues). If you have seen it, and you didn't like it, best not mention it to me really. I might take it the wrong way.

Happy birthday, Spaced.