Truth Seekers: Season 1

Gus Roberts is the star engineer at SMYLE, a new 6G broadband company operating on the south coast of England. In his spare time Roberts is also "the Truth Seeker," investigating paranormal activity on a low-key YouTube channel. When he gets a new engineer assistant, who goes by the improbable moniker of Elton John, and meets a strange woman hiding behind his house, his success rate in investigating the paranormal abruptly increases.

The combination of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is a proven, winning one. Their 1999-2001 TV series Spaced (made in concert with Jessica Hynes) is one of the great British sitcoms, whilst their films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz arguably remain the two greatest British comedy films of the 21st Century (to date), with The World's End being a distant but still decent follow-up. However, all of these projects were also undertaken with the collaboration of director Edgar Wright. Pegg and Frost's work without Wright (particularly their 2011 movie, Paul) has been very patchy, whilst Wright's solo work (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Baby Driver) has been far more accomplished.

A non-Wright collaboration between Pegg and Frost should therefore be regarded with suspicion, but Truth Seekers makes this more of a virtue. This new Amazon series makes a strength of the absence of Wright's trademark superlative editing and frenetic fast-cuts, instead opting for a slower, more deliberate and, well, more British pace. Truth Seekers is a restrained show which mixes low-key comedy with unexpected moments of real drama, pathos and horror to an ultimately winning effect.

It takes a little while to warm up. The first and easily weakest episode is stiff, not particularly funny and at times strained. The episode sets up a long list of clichés, including protagonist Frost being sad about his dead wife, living with his doddering father (Malcolm McDowell, initially phoning it in but quickly perking up and bringing his A-game) and joining forces with a new, clumsy partner (Samson Kayo) and his geeky sister (Susie Wokoma). They are given jobs by SMYLE's boss, Dave (a restrained Pegg) which somehow manage to combine fixing genuine broadband connectivity problems with paranormal activity, mostly revolving around ghosts, souls unable to move on to other planes or becoming trapped on the mortal plane. An early investigation sees the team joined by Astrid (Emma D'Arcy), a strange pixie-like girl with a mysterious past who appears to have spontaneously accumulated from every single female Joss Whedon character ever.

The piled-up clichés rapidly start dissolving though. Each character has a carefully thought-out backstory and it's the combination of these backstories that makes the plot more interesting. The show also finds convincing ways of explaining why, after twenty years of frustration, Gus is suddenly inundated with real paranormal cases. The characters evolve in surprising and original ways, and the stakes of the entire series ramp up, with the apparently disconnected mysteries-of-the-week gradually building into tiles of a much bigger mosaic. Excellent supporting actors also show up, with Trainspotting's Kelly McDonald appearing as a possible new ally and The Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt as a recurring foe.

Events culminate in a large-scale showdown which mixes in some existential body horror and real tragedy to the mix, as well as the inevitable cliffhanger for a second season.

Truth Seekers' first season (****) succeeds by virtue of not being another Frost/Pegg gag-a-minute geekpocalypse (helped by Pegg not being in it that much), instead being thoughtful and at times genuinely eerie thanks to some taut direction from Jim Field Smith. When it's funny, it can be very funny, but it knows when to play things for laughs and when to look for other emotional responses. Apart from that weak first episode, this is an accomplished series with an interesting tone, and it'll be good if it comes back for more. The first season is available now worldwide on Amazon Prime Video.

Happy 20th anniversary to SPACED

Spaced, the greatest sitcom about science fiction and fantasy fans ("geeks," if you will), turns 20 years old today.

Created by Jessica Hynes, Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright, Spaced is set in London and sees the twenty-something Tim Beasley (Pegg) and Daisy Steiner (Hynes) as flatmates who pretend they're a couple to secure an astonishingly reasonable London flat from their ex-rock groupie landlady Marsha (Julia Deakin). The other regular characters include Tim and Daisy's pretentious artist neighbour Brian (Mark Heap), Daisy's fashion-obsessed friend Twist (Katy Carmichael) and Tim's best friend Brian (Nick Frost), a disgraced member of the Territorial Army who was kicked out after commandeering a tank and trying to invade Paris before being distracted by EuroDisney and subsequently apprehended on Space Mountain. Recurring characters include Tim's sworn nemesis Dwayne Benzie (Peter Serafinowicz) and his comic shop owner boss, Bilbo (Bill Bailey), who at a key moment is forced to fire Tim for hurling over-the-top abuse at a young customer for trying to buy Jar-Jar Binks merchandise (Tim's subsequent boss then fires Tim when he discovers his dislike of Babylon 5).

The show's storylines revolved around the characters' interpersonal relationships, such as Brian and Twist's growing romance, and also around pop culture references. This included episodes inspired by everything from Resident Evil 2 to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to The Matrix to John Woo. However, the series maintained a strong comedic edge, mining the laughs from the characters and situations they found themselves in so even non-geeks could enjoy the show (the cast used Julia Deakin as their litmus for this, as the only geek reference she got was a Close Encounters of the Third Kind mashed potato gag). This also helped the show age gracefully, even though a number of shows and movies the series referenced have since fallen into obscurity.

Spaced only aired two seasons in 1999 and 2001, totalling fourteen episodes, but of course its impact was seismic. Hynes, Serafinowicz, Wright, Pegg and Frost reteamed for the movie Shaun of the Dead in 2004 (which by coincidence celebrates the 15th anniversary of its US release today) and the latter three then went on to make Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World's End (2013). Pegg also played Scotty in JJ Abrams' Star Trek movies and most recently appeared in Amazon's The Boys, whilst Frost recently had a regular role on Into the Badlands. Serafinowicz recently starred in Amazon's The Tick and Hynes had a starring role on Years and Years. Wright has also had a successful directing career with the critically-acclaimed movies Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Baby Driver and the forthcoming Last Night in Soho. He has also worked as a writer on movies including The Adventures of Tintin and Ant-Man. The show also featured before-they-were-famous turns by British comics from David Walliams to Ricky Gervais.

Spaced remains the finest sitcom about pop culture, challenged only by Community (Dan Harmon had never seen Spaced, but after viewing it had to admit there must have been some kind of weird shared cultural osmosis). It never looked down or sneered at SFF fandom, instead promoting the idea of fans as creative and warm-hearted individuals. The show also still looks incredible, Wright's fast-cut editing and dynamic camera moves making it look like a film. Why more sitcoms (British or otherwise) have not taken their cue from this show remains a mystery.

So far, the creators are resisting the urge to create a new series (although acknowledging they have talked about it), instead preferring to leave these characters as we last saw them: happy, optimistic and ready for the future. If you haven't checked out Spaced, it's well worth catching up with now.

Nick Frost and Simon Pegg to adapt RIVERS OF LONDON for television

Nick Frost and Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, The World's End, Paul, Spaced) have re-teamed to produce a television adaptation of Ben Aaronovitch's urban fantasy series Rivers of London.

Stolen Pictures, the production company founded by Frost and Pegg to develop new projects, have optioned the rights to the series and are searching for a production partner. Currently the plan is to adapt the first novel, Rivers of London (retitled Midnight Riot in the US for no particular reason) across 8-10 episodes. Subsequent seasons may combine the narratives of several books.

For Aaronovitch, this is coming full circle as he began his writing career in the 1980s working in television, including writing episodes of Doctor Who. After some time out of the writing field, he returned with the Rivers of London series, exploring the adventures of Peter Grant, a young constable in the Metropolitan Police who is drafted into the service's undercover magic division under Thomas Nightingale.

To date the series comprises the novels Rivers of London (2011), Whispers Under Ground (2012), Broken Homes (2013), Foxglove Summer (2014), The Hanging Tree (2016) and Lies Sleeping (2018), as well as several novellas and graphic novels. 

Star Trek Beyond

The USS Enterprise is three years into its five-year mission exploring deep space. However, Captain James T. Kirk is feeling boredom settling in. The mission consists of a lot more diplomatic work and less boldly exploring the frontier than he was expecting. Whilst docked at the massive Starbase Yorktown, the Enterprise receives a distress call from the heart of a nearby, mysterious nebula. Kirk sets out, eager to see something new...only to get a lot more than he bargained for.

When J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek in 2009, he assembled an absolutely killer cast. Replicating the chemistry of the original crew was a tall order, but he somehow achieved it with the likable - if massively flawed - first reboot film. It was also pretty much the only thing holding together the appalling sequel, Into Darkness, in 2013. The diabolical quality of that movie lowered expectations for this third entry in the new series, especially when it was announced that Simon Pegg would be writing the script and Justin Lin would be directing.

To some degree that was counter-intuitive, given Pegg's geek credentials and his strong writing experience (especially on the Spaced TV series and his collaborations with Edgar Wright). But Pegg's recent writing work has been patchy and Justin Lin is best known for the Fast and Furious franchise, not known for its thoughtful exploration of the unknown. Fans may have been a little too quick to judge there: not only is Lin a massive Star Trek fan from his chilldhood but his F&F movies transitioned quite cleverly from just dumb action movies into actions movies with a strong sense of character interplay, family and heart.

These sensibilities come into full force on Star Trek Beyond. Lin delivers explosions, impressive stunts and some great action set-pieces - and unlike the two previous movies, most of these are well-shot and comprehensible - but he also delivers on bringing the characters together and driving them apart and finding out what makes them tick as individuals and as a group. He is well-served by Simon Pegg's script (helped out by Doug Jung), the writer relishing his chance to finally write an all-out science fiction blockbuster and delivering. Pegg, like Abrams, is known to be a Star Wars fan much more than a Star Trek one, but whilst Abrams ill-advisedly set about trying to turn Trek into Wars, Pegg has actually sat down and worked out what makes Star Trek different and brought those elements into the script. For example, fans were bemused by the near-total lack of any decent Spock/McCoy banter in the Abrams movies but here get an entire, fairly substantial subplot focused on the two characters which works extremely well. Zoe Saldana's Uhura also gets a great (if a little brief) storyline as she gets under the skin of main villain Kraal (Idris Elba under heavy makeup) and tries to find out what makes him tick. Anton Yelchin's Chekov gets a fair few action scenes, so of the main cast it's only John Cho's Sulu that gets short shrift. And even he still gets to command the Enterprise, lead a prison break and is given the most personal stakes in the final showdown (nicely underplayed, as well).

Star Trek Beyond in fact tries to do something that is very clever: it goes for the all-out CG blockbuster stuff but then suddenly reins it in and goes for unexpected restraint. A lengthy (and slightly nonsensical) CGI space battle turns into a low-tech, far more relatable struggle on the surface of a planet. A major CG fest of phasers and spaceships in the finale gives way to that greatest of Star Trek staples: Kirk and the villain facing off with just their fists, but done in a near-zero gravity environment against a dizzying backdrop (if you suffer from strong vertigo, I would advise against seeing this film in 3D). The movie also sacrifices the shining Apple-influenced hallways and bridge of the Enterprise for a more primitive NX-class starship (cue the Star Trek: Enterprise fans cheering, although it's not that one) and brings back a genuine sense of wonder to the graphic design. Starbase Yorktown is a jaw-dropping creation, a multi-sided city floating in what is effectively a snowglobe, evoking not just previous Star Trek designs but also the Citadel of the Mass Effect trilogy.

The film also remembers it's the 50th anniversary year and uses the recent death of Leonard Nimoy to pay homage to that: young Spock learning of the passing of his older, other-dimensional self and then discovering a box of his possessions allows the movie to tip its hat at what came before in a surprisingly effective move which informs Spock's excellent character development throughout the rest of the movie. Zachary Quinto has less to do than in either of Beyond's two predecessors but his character arc is considerably more satisfying, emotional and, as some may say, logical.

New characters are surprisingly thin on the ground. The villain Kraal is well-played by Elba, but for most of the film lacks decent motivation. The finale finally explains who he is and what he wants, and it's a great moment, but comes rather late in the day. Still, Elba's villain satisfies far more than either Benedict Cumberbatch-trying-to-be-Ricardo-Montalban or Eric Bana's way too expositionary and over-explained Nero. Also impressive is Sofia Boutella as Jaylah, a native of the new planet who quickly becomes a key ally of Scotty (and later the rest of the gang). Boutella gives Jaylah just the right mix of badass warrior and slightly overwhelmed local girl, and her fascination with science and engineering plays well into the finale. I hope we see her back in the next film (if there is one; Beyond's opening numbers are looking a bit iffy at the moment). Shohreh Aghdashloo also gets a memorable cameo as a Federation commodore, a pick-up shot to help with exposition and sell Kirk's motivations a bit better. Given it was a late addition to the film, I do wonder if Lin and Pegg had seen her in The Expanse (or, more likely, the trailers) and decided to borrow her authoritative space leader charisma for their movie. In that case, good job.

It's not all a glorious bed of roses, though. There's a fairly obvious plot hole in why Kraal decides to stay on his rubbish planet long after he managed to take control of a swarm of warp-capable spacecraft which could have taken him anywhere he wanted in the galaxy. The Beastie Boys return to the soundtrack for a very well-explained (indeed, somewhat oversold) reason but it still feels out of place, and Star Trek Beyond tries to get a lot of mileage out of a joke that was a toss-off in a 1965 episode of Doctor Who (modern rock music is described as "classical music" by people in the future...BECAUSE THEY ARE IN THE FUTURE!). Kirk also gets to ride a motorbike because, hell, why not?.

But ultimately, Star Trek Beyond (****½) brings a surprising amount of heart to proceedings, doesn't entirely neglect the brain, engages in some great characterisation and team interplay, pays homage to its departed castmembers in a genuinely moving way (a toast to "departed friends" gains tremendous pathos during Anton Yelchin's reaction shot) and features Kirk punching an alien in the face, McCoy and Spock bickering like an old married couple, Scotty pulling off an engineering miracle, Sulu pulling off an insane piloting maneuver, Uhura figuring out how to communicate with an alien species (also: best depiction of the universal translator ever), and Chekov explaining how Russia invented everything, including Scotch. It is, inarguably, the best Star Trek movie in twenty years, since First Contact, and may even (much more arguably) be the best in twenty-five, since The Undiscovered Country. The film is on general release now.

The World's End

Twenty years ago, five school friends set out to do the 'Golden Mile', a pub crawl taking in a dozen pubs in their home town of Newton Haven. They didn't quite make it. Now Gary King is determined to complete the crawl and rounds up his former mates. But once back in their home town, they discover that things aren't quite what they seem...

The World's End is the concluding film in the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, following on from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. These films have different characters but a recurring cast and are the creations of Simon Pegg (writer, lead actor) and Edgar Wright (writer, director), supported by Nick Frost (actor). Each film is based around a colour which represents the movie's genre and theme as well as being a flavour of Cornetto: red for Shaun (representing blood and the horror genre), blue for Fuzz (representing the police and the buddy cop/action genre) and now green for World's End. Finding out why the film uses the green colour is part of the fun.
 
The film is the first collaboration between Pegg and Wright in six years, with both having been busy in Hollywood in the meantime. Pegg has worked on the Mission Impossible and Star Trek franchises and written his own stand-alone SF flick, Paul (also co-starring Frost). Wright helmed the hyper-kinetic, gloriously entertaining Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World and has been developing an Ant-Man movie at Marvel. The break has done them both good, with the result being a film that trades less on past glories (aside from the fence gag and the Cornetto motif, there are no returning jokes or sly shout-outs) and stands more on its own two feet. What it does take from its forebears, however, is structure and tone.

Like Hot Fuzz, The World's End centres on a tonal shift which transforms it from one type of film into another. In Hot Fuzz, this moment came about three-quarters of the way through the film when it transformed from a Wicker Man-style rural horror film into a Michael Bay blockbuster, but the film pulled it off through excellent foreshadowing. The World's End's corresponding moment comes in the toilets of the fourth pub, about a quarter of the way into the film, and is less successful: we've known the characters for a lot shorter period of time and the shift is not adequately foreshadowed. The move from surprisingly effective character drama to balls-out action flick is not as well-handled as in Hot Fuzz and the credulity-straining premise of the film is further eroded by the decision our heroes make to complete the pub crawl in the face of all logic. It's a bit like that bit in Shaun of the Dead when Pegg and Frost decide to hole up against the zombie hordes in the pub which doesn't entirely make sense, but you kind of go along with it because it's one thing and the result is uproariously hilarious (most notably, the pool cue accompaniment to Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now'). The World's End instead has to justify its premise eight times (each time they leave a pub and the situation has escalated further) and the results are only moderately amusing.

In fact, The World's End is at its best when the crazy SF stuff is forgotten and we're focusing on the character interrelationships. The five friends are convincingly portrayed. Particularly successful is the way that Gary's unhealthy obsession with the past and how it has increasingly dominated his thoughts the more his adult life has descended into failure, poverty and addiction is both bleak and exceptionally well-played by Pegg; this is Pegg's finest performance since Hot Fuzz and maybe his finest performance ever. It's certainly Frost's, as for once he plays the straight man to Pegg's more erratic lead and does so with a surprising level of maturity. Sadly, this strong performance tails off towards the end of the film when Frost's character falls off the wagon and he reverts to a more familiar 'funny fat guy' routine. Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan and an excellent Paddy Considine all provide able support as the other members of the childhood gang. More wasted is Rosamund Pike as the nominal love interest, who gets very little to do.

The SF stuff is rather more unbelievable, with little effort to integrate it into the reality of the film (as with the zombies in Shaun of the Dead). In fact, the SF stuff rapidly becomes a bit of a chore and a distraction from the real story, which is what's going on with Gary. Even the characters seem to feel this way, with a five-minute fight scene with the 'bad guys' ending and the cast immediately returning to interrogating Gary about what's going on in his head. Oddly, this is an SF film where the SF stuff is an unwelcome deviation from the more mundane, character-based drama and relationships. This is The World's End's biggest failure, as both Shaun and Hot Fuzz used their outlandish events to reinforce the drama and characters, whilst in The World's End they merely distract.

That said, what The World's End does have is a really great ending. It doesn't wimp out and the ending integrates the two sides of the film together more successfully than anything up to that point. Indeed, of the three films in the trilogy The World's End is the only one that feels like it could have a really good sequel.

The World's End (***½) is the weakest film in the trilogy, although even in failure it still provides some great laughs and some interesting characters. It is a lot better than Paul, for certain, and seems to prove that Simon Pegg is at his best in collaboration with Edgar Wright. Hopefully it won't be so long before they next team up. The film is on general release now in the UK and next month in the USA.

WORLD'S END release date brought forwards

The movie The World's End has had its release date brought forwards by a full month. The film will now be released on 19 July in the UK this year (the US release date of 23 August remains - so far- unchanged).

The World's End is the third and concluding film in Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's thematic Three Flavours of Cornetto trilogy, following on from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (Paul, though also starring Pegg and Nick Frost, was created by a different team), as well as their TV show Spaced. As well as starring Pegg and Frost and being directed by Wright, some other actors from the earlier projects are reappearing: Paddy Considine (one of the Andys from Hot Fuzz), David Bradley (the incomprehensible farmer from Hot Fuzz) and Mark Heap (tortured artist Brian from Spaced) will also have roles in the new film. Apart from Pegg and Frost, the only actors to appear in all three films are Martin Freeman, though he will have a larger role than his two brief appearances in the prior movies, and Rafe Spall (who also appeared in Spaced).

The film's premise is that a bunch of friends go out on the town in London to recreate an epic pub crawl from their youth, only to get caught up in the disaster to end all disasters.

The World's End has done a straight swap with Kick-Ass 2, which is now being released on 23 August in the UK (and 16 August in the USA).

THE WORLD'S END starts filming

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright have reunited to start filming the third movie in their Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. The first two movies in this very loosely-connected trilogy were Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, both of which were international hits. Martin 'Bilbo Baggins' is the third actor to appear in all three movies, whilst Paddy Considine also returns after appearing in Hot Fuzz. Rosamund Pike and Eddie Marsan round off the list of announced actors. A new poster for the movie has also been released:

The movie will be released on 14 August 2013 in the UK and 25 October 2013 in the USA.

Trivia: World's End is an area of Chelsea, London named after a pub (the same pub that will feature in the film prominently). The first episode of the 1964 Doctor Who serial The Dalek Invasion of Earth was also named after this area.

Comic-Con posters: THE HOBBIT and THE WORLD'S END

A whole ton of interesting stuff is happening at the San Diego Comic-Con, as usual. A lot of upcoming movies have had exclusive teaser posters released for them, and these are two of the most interesting:

An Unexpected Journey is the first of two movies adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit to the big screen. The same crew are handling the project as the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy a decade ago, including director Peter Jackson. The first movie will be released this December. Principal filming on the two movies ended a week ago, with the production switching to editing and special effects work.

The World's End won't start shooting until September and is planned for release later in 2013. This is the third in the thematic Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, following on from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and reunites director Edgar Wright with actors Simon Pegg (who also co-writes) and Nick Frost (Paul, despite featuring Pegg and Frost, doesn't count because it was directed by someone else).

The World's End is set during an unspecified disaster that threatens the entire world. Rather that played out from a traditional large-scale, global perspective, the threat is instead glimpsed through a group of characters (including Pegg and Frost) as they recreate a pub-crawl around London from a decade earlier, culminating at the World's End pub in Camden. Expect laughs and ice cream.

The trilogy is so-called because each movie features the characters eating a Cornetto ice cream whose colour is related to the movie: blood red (strawberry) for zombie horror flick Shaun of the Dead; police blue (original flavour) for crime caper Hot Fuzz; and alien green (mint) for The World's End. The title is also a riff on Krzysztof Kieslowski's excellent Three Colours series.

Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg

Over the last ten years Simon Pegg has risen from being a minor stand-up comic to one of the UK's most recognisable funny men, via the classic TV series Spaced and the movies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. He's also become a sort-of ambassador and spokesman for geek culture due to his well-known love of all things SF&F (only don't mention the Star Wars prequels in his presence).


This autobiography is an interesting read but ultimately fails to entirely satisfy. Pegg himself seems to frequently cast aspersions on the project, pointing out that most celebrity bios are rubbish and a bit pointless. Whilst Pegg has certainly had an interesting enough career to cover in a book (moving from unknown stand-up to having Spielberg, Romero, Tarantino and Peter Jackson on his mobile phone contacts list), much of this 'interesting stuff' gets short shrift. Instead, the book focuses on Pegg's childhood, teenage years and upbringing in Gloucestershire.

Pegg writes engagingly, but eschews any type of chronological structure in favour of a thematic one, although this doesn't work well. As such the book bounces around the timeline of his life fairly randomly as he recounts various childhood incidents. Some of these are very funny, but the problem Pegg has is that he had a perfectly ordinary, middle-class upbringing in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite his strong geek credentials, he wasn't really a stereotypical geek at school either. Indeed, he was exuberant, out-going and arty, and even spent a brief period bullying younger and smaller children at school (until, not entirely unsympathetically, one of his victims grew up to be much bigger than him and eventually exacted revenge). His recounting of friendships and early romantic entanglements is rather endearing, but the book only really gets interesting when we get insights into events that were clearly influential on his later acting and writing.

For example, arguably the three finest chapters in the book deal with Star Wars. The first two recount his early exposure to the trilogy and his essay on the trilogy's impact on popular culture and cinema of the period. The third analyses the prequel trilogy and where exactly George Lucas went wrong (which might feel redundant if it wasn't then illuminated by a conversation between Pegg and Lucas at the end which features Lucas's eye-popping admission that he shouldn't have been making the same movie over and over again for thirty years). These sections are great, contrasting Pegg as the young kid exposed to this huge, zeitgeist-defining shift in pop culture and as the older adult confronting a cynical marketing and toy-selling exercise. A further chapter where Pegg recollects his friendship with Nick Frost and their frequent patronage of a local pub is also brilliant, as we start seeing the genesis of Shaun of the Dead in the duo's refusal to try other hostelries. There's also some solid anecdotage here, such as the time they invited Gillian Anderson to join them for an X-Files-themed pub quizz night and knew more about the show than she did, or when they convinced Chris Martin of Coldplay to let the pub have the band's second album for the jukebox weeks before its official release.

Similar gems are sprinkled through the book, such as the time Pegg and (frequent collaborator and director) Edgar Wright won an argument with a mickey-taking Quentin Tarantino, or when Pegg donned a Batman Joker mask to traverse Comic-Con to get stuff signed without being stopped by Shaun of the Dead fans, but the good stuff is few and far between. Pegg, somewhat bafflingly, says that he can't get into the nuts and bolts of his professional career without risking offending anyone. As a result, we get only a small amount of writing about Shaun of the Dead, a little on Spaced and his new movie, Paul, and virtually nothing on Hot Fuzz. Given that the latter film was much-inspired by Pegg and Wright's Gloucestershire upbringing and could have been thematically linked to the earlier formative recollections, this feels like a missed opportunity.

Every few chapters Pegg drops in a chapter from a non-existent novel in which Simon Pegg, international agent provocateur, the best-dressed man in Europe and lover extraordinaire, battles the machinations of an evil enemy with the assistance of his robot butler and bodyguard Canterbury (absolutely not based on Threepio from Star Wars, apparently) whilst being frustrated by his inability to quote from The Shawshank Redemption correctly. These sections are amusing, but thankfully brief, given their reliance on the same few jokes.

Nerd Do Well (***) is readable and somewhat entertaining, but also disappointing: the author doesn't really talk about the things that made him famous and his life story is pretty straightforward with no major drama to recount. As such it's a fun but disposable read crying out for a much more in-depth sequel. The book is available now in the UK and in June 2011 in the USA.

Trailer for PAUL

The duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, plus the classic TV series Spaced) have teamed up again for Paul, the story of two British UFO nuts on a pilgrimage to Area 51 who encounter an alien named, er, Paul. The movie hits on Valentine's Day 2011.

This looks decently enjoyable, with Arrested Development's Jason Bateman in a supporting role. However, this isn't the third movie in the 'Cornetto' trilogy, as director Edgar Wright was busy with Scott Pilgrim when this was being made (Superbad's Greg Mottola helmed Paul). The planned third movie in that trilogy - with the very early working title The World Ends - is apparently still a few years away.

Wertzone Classics: Spaced

Spaced was a UK sitcom that ran for two seasons in 1999 and 2001 and was tremendously critically acclaimed at the time. The creative team subsequently moved into cinema, creating the hit movies Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and the forthcoming The World Ends, but Spaced remains by far their funniest and most rewarding work.


The series opens with aspiring comic book artist Tim Bisley (Simon Pegg) and workshy writer Daisy Steiner (Jessica Stephenson) both having to find a new place to live. Randomly bumping into one another in the local cafe, they decide to fake being a couple to rent a surprisingly cheap flat in London. The rest of the regular cast is rounded off by their landlady Marsha (a wine-swigging, ex-groupie single mum), Tim's best friend Mike (a failed soldier with a weapons fixation), Daisy's best friend Twist (who Tim sums up as being a "bit like Cordelia from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and latterly its spin-off series Angel, which is set in LA,") and Brian, the mildly pretentious artist (specialities: anger, pain, fear and aggression) who rents Marsh's basement flat.

It's a pretty traditional sitcom set-up, but Spaced differs from the average sitcom in two important respects. First, it is directed, shot and edited much more like a movie, with fast-cuts, segues, occasionally impressive special effects and the use of real locations (a nightclub sequence is actually filmed in a proper nightclub, for example, rather than a lame set). Secondly, the series is absolutely overflowing with movie, TV and comic references, some verbal, others visual, some subtle and some pretty outrageous. The DVDs come equipped with a 'homage-o-metre' which tracks these references as they fly past. The homage-o-metre almost explodes during Season 2 when Robot Wars, Fight Club ("No-one talks about Robot Club!") and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are all heavily referenced in just one episode.

What makes Spaced special is the way these elements are combined with some excellent writing and acting, particularly from Pegg and Stephenson as the leads and the brilliant Mark Heap as Brian (who went on from Spaced to win acclaim in a number of other Channel 4 comedy shows, most notably Green Wing). The comedic situations are also hilarious, such as Tim getting loaded on cheap speed and playing Resident Evil 2 for 12 hours straight, leading to him visualising the world as if a zombie apocalypse is taking place (this was the inspiration for Shaun of the Dead), or the gang's attempts to gatecrash their teenage neighbours' party turning into a Close Encounters of the Third Kind homage. There's also plenty of cameos from other comedians, with Little Britain's David Walliams playing transsexual artist Vulva and The Office's Ricky Gervais putting in a cameo as a slimy newspaper worker, whilst the irrepressible Bill Bailey steals every scene he's in as Tim's comic shop boss Bilbo Bagshot (who retains mild guilt about once punching his dad in the face for saying Hawk the Slayer was rubbish, instead of suggesting they watch Krull and compare the two).

The two seasons are linked by ongoing story arcs, although these are fairly low-key. Daisy and Tim having to fake being in a relationship to appease Marsha is a point revisited several times (leading to awkwardness when both end up in other relationships), whilst Mike is battling to be readmitted to the Territorial Army, having been thrown out after trying to invade Paris with a Chieftain tank. The second season is linked together by Daisy's employment problems, Brian and Twist's romance and Tim's utter hatred and loathing of The Phantom Menace, which lands him in hot water on several occasions (and gives rise to the legendary primal scream of, "BUT JAR-JAR BINKS MAKES THE EWOKS LOOK LIKE FU**ING SHAFT!").

Spaced (*****) lasted for just 14 episodes almost a decade ago, but remains one of the funniest, most entertaining sitcoms ever committed to screen. Even now rewatching certain episodes reveals more previously-missed homages to movies or comics, and the series seems to just get better with age. The complete series is available on DVD in both the UK and the USA. The US DVD edition is even more impressive, as it features guest-commentaries from the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Matt Stone.