Spaced
From July 2020
There a number of TV comedy shows which completely passed me by first time around but in the last few years - thanks to the magic of Netflix - have become some of my favourites. These include Friday Night Dinner, Toast of London, Peep Show (all 54 episodes now watched four times straight through) and - most recently - Spaced.
Spaced was written and starred Jessica Stevenson and Simon Pegg, Stevenson playing aspiring writer Daisy, Pegg in the role of Tim, a graphic novel artist. It’s very fin de siècle (the first series aired in late 1999) predating Pegg’s Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Watching Spaced it’s easy to see how Pegg’s humour developed into those films but for my money it’s more effective in these 25 minute long episodes.
Episode 6 “Epiphanies” starts with a flashback to 1983 where avant-garde artist Brian (Mark Heap) relives an evening in a nightclub listening to Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners. You can watch it here but the look of bewilderment on his face as the rest of the club go ape-shit for Dexys before he realises it’s the best thing ever and joins in mirrors exactly how I felt about the song.
Regular readers will know that the utterly wonderful © Dexys Midnight Runners are a recurring theme in my writing. But stick with me here, you might learn something; then again you might not.
Dexys were / are a soul band put together by Kevin Rowland, the only constant in an ever changing line up spanning five decades. No doubt he’s borderline mad but insanity and genius often go hand in hand. In 1980 Dexys struck number one in the UK charts with their second single, the incredibly catchy Geno, an idiosyncratic tribute to Geno Washington. I fell in love with Rowland’s new soul vision and the subsequent album Searching For The Young Soul Rebels was rarely off my turntable.
Perversley, given that Searching For The Young Soul Rebels sold 250,000 copies that year, my main objection to their follow up Too-Rye-Aye was that Rowland had sold out. In my mind I was the only person who previously listened to Dexys and everyone else was merely jumping on the bandwagon. I hated Come On Eileen, affected not to understand why others liked it and refused to dance to it when - inevitably - it was played at every wedding I attended over the following two decades including one with my then girlfriend Eileen. But then at some point in the early 2000s, like Brian, I had an epiphany, realised that string-led Celtic soul of Too-Rye-Aye was every bit as good if not better than Dexys’ debut album. Reader, I bought the CD.
If I were writing a school report card for Dexys albums it would be - in order of release - Stunning, Sensational, Superb, Spectacular. But that would be incomplete: in 2016 Dexys released a fifth album after which the report card reads Stunning, Sensational, Superb, Spectacular, Shit. Let the Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul does what it says on the tin and is an aural car crash. At best I’d say the renditions of ‘Carrickfergus', 'Curragh of Kildare' and 'Women of Ireland' are passable. But even in the interest of research I can’t bring myself to listen to them again.
So why did Kevin Rowland record it? Like the perpetrators of the Baker Street bank robbery or Lance Armstrong's ill-advised return to professional cycling in 2009, after a succesful career it’s hard to resist ‘one last job’. In fairness to Rowland he did that in 2012 with One Day I’m Going To Soar, an incredible return to form after a 27 year break. And while I’m not suggesting he deserves a jail sentence or a ban from cycling for Let The Record Show, it’s a shame he couldn’t have left his previous recordings to speak for themselves untarnished by some Irish jigs.
Which brings us back to Spaced. I think “Ephipanies” is possibly the funniest 25 minutes of TV I’ve ever seen and the first series feels complete: it has a beginning, a middle and a (sort of) end. Time will tell, indeed time has already told because I’m watching on an almost 20 year delay, but a couple of episodes in to the second series and so far it feels like ‘one last job’. A bit like resurrecting a blog after an absence of four years.