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My favorite DVD purchase this year so far is my copy of the BBC TV Show “Spaced.” This show has been out for many years overseas and has never been released in the States until now(mainly due to music rights issues.) Created by Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes and directed by Edgar Wright, this show is chock-full of all kinds of pop culture references and has a visual style all it’s own.  A style that carried over into Simon Pegg’s and Edgar Wright’s later efforts, “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.”

Although the universe of ”Spaced” is inhabited by a great number of quirky characters and has an exaggerative sense to what’s happening, there is a lot of real groundedness to many of the relationships and how the characters react to certain situations. You can relate to many of the scenarios, because Jessica and Edgar based much of the show on many of their own experiences. Of course, the show also has homages to everything from “The Matrix” to “Evil Dead” to “Pulp Fiction” to “The Shining” to “Star Wars” to “Wolfen.” Lots of filmic references that show their love for movies in general.

Which brings me to the special features of this new DVD set. For the American release they asked several celebrities to sit in with Edgar, Jessica and Simon and contribute audio commentary. You would assume that the reason they were there was because they were such big fans of the show and wanted to talk about all the references and scenes that make “Spaced” a pleasure to watch. So far I’ve listened to commentaries for a few of the first episodes that have Kevin Smith(director of ”Clerks” and “Chasing Amy”) and Diablo Cody(writer of “Juno”) and I’m a little disappointed. As much as I enjoy listening to Smith’s “SModcast” podcast, I wanted to hear more of his passion for all the pop culture references but it mainly ended up being him interviewing the other cast members and having them talk about things that were already explained in the feature length documentary.

The same goes for Diablo, because much of the early commentary involves Jessica asking her about how she came up with the story of “Juno.” This is the “Spaced” commentary, right?

I guess this is a minor grievance, because they do have the original British commentary by the actors on the show on a separate audio track, but I hoped that these new American commentaries would add to the DVD as opposed to detract from it. Of course, I haven’t listened to the rest of the commentaries by Tarantino and Patton Oswalt just yet and I have a feeling that those will be actual commentaries and not disjointed conversations. Once I make it through the rest of the commentaries, I’ll let everyone know what I think overall. I guess I should just be glad I can watch “Spaced” in the comfort of my own American home, because it is one of my favorite TV shows of all time.