The setup makes the sitcom look like it's about to become a Brit Two's Company, complete with nosy and horny landlady Marsha (Deakin) and memorably odd neighbor Brian (Heap). Tim's best friend is Mike, a gung-ho, militaristic twit (Frost); Daisy's is girly-girl Twist Morgan (Katy Carmichael). Wacky hijinx do ensue. But they are less a factor, in the show's appeal, than the path of two shared lives with a visual vocabulary almost completely formed from pop culture.

Opening the freezer becomes an homage to the HAL 9000 scenes in 2001; a visit to an artsy-fartsy reception becomes a homage to Resident Evil; a game of paintball leads to a friend going down and an angry "NO!!!!!' shouted at the heavens, as in every war movie ever made. Tim's recently cleaned bedroom emits a blinding white light a la Close Encounters.

The Terminator, Jurassic Park, X-Men, X-Files and An American Werewolf in London are among the classics referenced on a nigh-constant basis, and viewers intent on catching all the homages are advised to check out one DVD extra that provides helpful captions at the rate of one a minute or so.

Nirvana for nerds

Spaced is not science fiction or fantasy, but it merits mention here for two reasons. The first is, of course, its use of a pop-cultural, usually science-fictional visual vocabulary to further its tale of two aimless young people who are not going anywhere in particular. Amusing as the references can be, for their own sake, they contrast nicely with the daily woes of two people with high artistic ambitions but little drive for anything beyond procrastinating with DVDs and video games.

(Nor is science fiction the only form of entertainment lampooned; Brian, who is so out of it that he needs a formal introduction to the first Star Wars trilogy, is a long-suffering artiste whose infatuation with another leads to a quite funny visit to an experimental play of the sort that leaves trapped audience members checking their watches after 10 minutes.)

The second is, of course, the presence of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, along with director Edgar Wright, who subsequently teamed again with the relationship-comedy-masquerading-as-zombie-holocaust-thriller Shaun of the Dead. Fans of that will likely geek out at the early episode that features Tim hallucinating zombies at an arty reception. It's pre-Shaun Shaun.

The real pleasure is the interplay between faux couple Daisy and Tim, two people who have everything and at the same time absolutely nothing in common. There's comedy nirvana in an early two-parter where Daisy adopts a dog with Tim's assent but notable lack of enthusiasm, and there's a great moment where Daisy gazes adoringly at the new arrival, kvelling beyond all reason at its mere presence, while the more restrained Tim can only curl his lip, trying not to hate it.