First look at US Spaced remake
First look at US Spaced remake
Mar 04I think I burned out my geek-rage gland. Not over the subject of this post, mind; just in general. It might be an age thing. Inspiring any nerd passion in me requires that it involve something close to my heart, and even then, I often default to a (shrug) “What do they know? They don’t get it and I’m not interested in explaining it to them” position.
So, it is with complete and utter raising of one lazy eyebrow, that I repost this YouTube clip from Frederico Dordei’s website – It’s a 5 minute sampling of the US remake of Spaced and Dordei plays the role of Brian/Christian.
The 20-something me would have latched onto a lot of things – the changing of the names (Tim is now Ben, for example). Even the young 30-something me would have opted to expound on the fact that in the US Tim/Daisy/Ben/Apryl team-up, they can’t just be a couple, as in the British version, they have to be married.
Or course it’s driven the fans mad – not for any real good reason other than it’s NOT the original. Which is something old me wishes young me had understood. What’s to be gained by re-doing what was already done if they don’t try it different? We have the original – it is amazing. And I’m happy that young me was an early adopter – as in, buy DVD from UK before it aired in North American, then dub it to VHS and send it to Sarah, getting her hooked. But young me was also a bit of an idiot. Did comics teach him nothing? If you’re going to re-tell the same stories over and over, it has to be jazz – you keep the notes, but you have to move it around a bit.
Oddly, the one thing a lot of the commenters on YouTube latched onto was that they hated Will Sasso as Bill/Mike, particularly when he and Ben/Tim play with the finger-gun. I thought that was the moment when the show was most like the original – not in content, but in tone. The clicking on-off of the finger-gun safety catch was funny.
Here’s the thing – Will can’t to Nick Frost. Well, it probably could, and Nick could probably do him, but that’s not what we want, is it? Doing Nick’s take on Mike is only an invitation to disaster. Sara Rue, as Apryl, is already doing Jessica Hynes’ speech tics and it’s close, but without seeing more, I’m not sure how it’ll feel over a whole series.
A small bit of reality needs to be remembered by everyone that sees it and yells, “NO! KILL IT!” (that’s a direct quote from YouTube) – the pilot was shot in 2008 and the producers gave Dordei a clip to make public… so, it’s obviously not getting picked up too quickly.
I’m applying old man, Ghostbusters 3 logic here. The original series is done, never to be again and it was awesome. And we always want more awesome, so while it may not work out in the end, they might as well try – it’s better than nothing.
And if you honestly think a new movie/remake of a tv show/etc can ruin the original… grow up. And get off my lawn.
