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With its cute multigenre tag, "rom-zom-com" (romantic zombie comedy), and even cuter title, Shaun of the Dead should set off more alarm bells than a horde of the living dead in a shopping mall. But unlike such recent British comedies as Mike Bassett: England Manager and Sex Lives of the Potato Men, which never rose above their tabloid-headline monikers, Shaun of the Dead has a wit, vitality, and likability (the last a rare commodity in lowlife-obsessed contemporary British cinema) that raise it head and shoulders above its peers.
Directed by 29-year-old Edgar Wright, and cowritten by Wright and lead actor Simon Pegg, Shaun of the Dead is about what happens when frustrating everyday matters like flatmate squabbles, girlfriend trouble, and familial duties have to be worked out while dealing with the irksome task of fighting off the undead. It represents a collision between the quotidian and the outlandish that Wright and Pegg established over two seasons of Spaced, a cult-Lumed-hit sitcom that aired on Britain's Channel 4 in 1999 and 2001. Created by the show's stars, Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, Spaced centered on a pair of friends-drawn together out of desperate mutual necessity-trying to overcome various failures, heartbreaks, and humiliations without straying too far from their ratty yet cozy North London flat (or, more specifically, the beanbag directly in front of the TV in their ratty yet cozy North London flat).
Spaced had purposeful vision and a youthful brio, challenging accepted sitcom conventions in such a way that it immediately stood out. Wright has been making films since he was 14 (beginning with Rolf Harris Saves the World) and completed his first feature, a Western spoof called A Fistful of Fingers, when he was 19. From there, he moved into television, cutting his teeth on sketch-based shows such as Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round...