You can't dangle the bogus carrot of Spaced in front of our face whilst riding some other donkey

Post writers strike the dreaded US remake of Spaced (“McSpaced!!” screamed the fans) is grinding into action. Obviously Spaced fans are going mental about it, meanwhile we here at That Joke have decided to reserve opinion.

Okay, okay, it’s probably going to be awful. We KNOW that, we really really do. Spaced is one of the sacred gems of UK comedy. But okay, look, it’s being made now. There’s nothing any of us can do about it. We accept that Pegg/Write/Hynes aren’t involved, we accept it’s being made by McG, someone who should be banned from making television for the good of humanity, we even accept that there has only ever been one decent US remake of a UK show (no prizes for guessing which one. No, not Men Behaving Badly. Okay...okay, we’ll give you Sanford and Son as well. There are two decent remakes).

But ya know, it’s being made now and that’s an end to it. If they get a team of decent geeky pop-literate writers in, if it’s cast right, crucially if it’s not filmed live, and if it isn't called 'Spaced' it could…just about be okay. It'll just be a bit of a rip off.

It won’t be Spaced. It can't be. But it might be something we can still like just the same. There’s no point in complaining until it’s out.

Then all hell can let loose, obviously.

In the meantime, enjoy this:

PS Spaced is a gift that keeps on giving as you navigate through the tail end of your twenties...at the NME Awards Big Gig last night all I could think was "they're all so thin"...