Any real fans of the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright trio know that they all didn’t meet on the set of Shaun of the Dead. In fact, the reason they got the chance to do Shaun was due to the success of a 1999 BBC TV series they all created called Spaced.
The show, starring Pegg, Frost, and Jessica Hynes, was about a comic book artist who has to fake a marriage with a complete stranger in order to stay in an apartment made for “professional couples.” The show was quirky and funny, and developed a huge cult following on DVD. It also seemed to turn the heads of a few US producers, including McG and now producer of Chuck and Human Target, Peter Johnson.
The U.S. version of the show was a failure, to say the least, and never made it past the pilot stage. None of the original creative team were involved, or even brought into the loop that the show existed, until recently. Simon Pegg twittered a clip from the failed pilot, starring Sara Rue (Less Than Perfect), Josh Lawson, and Will Sasso (MadTV).
Take a look at the clip after the jump, and you’ll understand why the show never made it past the unaired pilot. The only thing worth mentioning is that Will Sasso truly is the US version of Nick Frost. Outside of that, there isn’t much going for this half-assed clone of a show.
Russ Burlingame
March 7, 2010 at 8:48 amAs terrible as it looks, I’m always intrigued by these sorts of things. My favorite movie of all time, “Zero Effect,” was turned into a TV pilot that’s supposedly one of the most unrelentingly terrible experiences that any viewer will ever have. Still, I wish I could find a copy just to see what happened and the process and all that. Same thing with the unaired “Parenthood” pilot with the girl from “Dogma” and “ER”.
Anonymous
March 6, 2010 at 3:51 pmthat sucked ass