Friday 11 December 2009

Spaced...The Lost Generation

I went to the doctors the other day, which is boring I realise but relevant to this blog, stay with me my story gets better!

Whilst waiting to see my GP and to be told something utterly useless I rifled through the magazines in the waiting room for something printed after 2007. Finding something from 2009 was an epic success.

Anyhoo, my luck was clearly in, this particular issue of (I think it was Vanity Fair, but don't quote me) had a very interesting interview with one of my personal idols, Simon Pegg, conducted by Janice Street Porter.

The media standard questions were issued, albeit with a touch more informed finesse from the JSP; Spaced/SotD & Hot Fuzz/Hollywood beckoning and a sprinkling of questions related to Pegg's personal life.

Of course one of the main topics that piqued my interest, always, is that of Spaced. Given that I believe it to be the best television show Britain has ever produced.

And what I want to address is a comment made by Pegg on the concept behind Spaced which I think sums it up perfectly and makes it one of the most germane sitcoms for my generation (and by my generation I mean those who are in their mid/late twenties and early thirties).

The comment was (roughly, I didn't take the mag from the GPs for reference) that Spaced essentially speaks to what can be referred to as today’s "Lost Generation". Up until fairly recently when you hit the 25 mark a special tag embedded somewhere in you went off in a sort of Logans Run type fashion. When this tag sends out its beacon it starts your biological clock and alerts society to start piling on the pressure for you to get married, punch out a few kids, get that promotion and the house in the suburbs and live normally ever after.

For my parents, the parents of pretty much everyone I know and the generations that preceded them this was the societal norm. Not in a fascist regime kind of way, it's just what everyone did. There was an unspoken agreement about what sort of time in your life you really should have figured everything out and be a grown up.

However, for my generation (the "Spaced" generation) we seem to have acquired an extra ten years that we, in Peggs words, "don't really know what to do with".

This extra ten years that bridge the gap from 25 to 35 (roughly, you can allow for extra on either side of those numbers depending on your situation) are spent barely navigating our way through our lives desperately trying to figure out what the hell it is we want to do with ourselves.

Tim & Daisy encapsulate this feeling of extended studentness perfectly and it's expertly peppered with the added anguish of well...the fact that we aren't students any more but supposed grown-ups in the eyes of the world but sure as hell not feeling like it.

We are the Star Wars, Genre Loving, Pop-Culture Quoting "Lost Generation" and that's why Spaced speaks to us. That's what makes it so good. Well, that and it's groundbreaking cinematic style, exceptional writing and brilliant cast of course.

It tapped into what we were all feeling, and still are to an extent, and put it on the small screen in the best way imaginable.

Spaced pretty much said; we get it, and isn't it hilarious?

Best. Sitcom. Ever.