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.