'Shaun of the Dead' fans must get 'Spaced'

SITCOM characters, even those who are struggling to find their way in the world, tend to live in well-appointed homes that would tax the finances of a hedge-fund manager. Not so in "Spaced," the cult British sitcom that makes its belated premiere on DVD this week. A pair of aimless, fitfully employed Londoners in their mid-20s, Tim (Simon Pegg) and Daisy (Jessica Stevenson) inhabit a cramped, two-bedroom flat with beanbag furniture and movie posters tacked to the wall.

Originally aired in 1999 and 2001, the series' two seven-episode seasons were conceived in part as a response to shows like "Friends," with their impeccably styled actors living out airbrushed versions of post-collegiate crises.

Tim, an aspiring comic-book artist, and Daisy, a would-be writer, are thrown together by a mutual need for cheap lodging and the fact that the only suitable flat is labeled "professional couples only." But the high-concept ruse is quickly, and deliberately, forgotten, replaced by the absurd comedy of the everyday: long days on the couch and long nights in the pub, with the occasional job interview or abortive romance.

Although their day-to-day drone doesn't provide much stimulation, they live vivid lives through the prism of popular culture. When Daisy sits down at her typewriter to make up a roster of household chores, she imagines herself as a wild-haired composer in the throes of artistic abandon, accompanied by visions of rubber-gloved hands and spinning pots straight out of a Busby Berkeley montage.

For Tim, "Star Wars" is a sacred text, followed closely by the films in the "Evil Dead" trilogy and "Tomb Raider." For much of "Spaced's" second season, he is consumed by the traumatic letdown of "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace," but even in his disillusion, he cannot escape its pull. When Tim sets fire to his "Star Wars" collection, the scene echoes the funeral pyre from "Return of the Jedi."

The show's rapid-fire referentiality has made it beloved of the ComiCon set, who have been swapping bootleg copies and foreign DVDs for years. On the commentary tracks added to the American edition, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Diablo Cody wax euphoric about the show, bringing a message of welcome from Planet Geek. As Smith and Tarantino are, along with "The Simpsons," the show's most obvious forerunners, the love fest is decidedly mutual.