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Troperville

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A Brit Com focused on two twenty-something friends at crossroads in their lives. Tim is a cynical aspiring comic book artist and hipster geek who is dumped by his girlfriend in the first episode. Daisy is a bubbly aspiring journalist who doesn't have anything to say nor the work ethic to say it. They pretend to be a couple in order to rent an inexpensive flat. The show focuses on their zany adventures as they struggle to get their lives on track. Tim's military-obsessed friend Mike, Daisy's ditzy glamour friend Twist, Mad Artist Brian in the flat below and dipsomanic landlady Marsha complete the main cast.

The show was written by its stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright. Because Pegg and Wright went on to collaborate on a string of successful films, Stevenson's contributions are often ignored by overeager marketing executives who label the show as "From the creators of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz." Still, the show's manic camera work and frequent references to popular genre films and TV shows can ring very familiar.

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Contains examples of:

Themes

• Sit Com
• Magic Realism: The show presents an exaggerated, cartoonish, and often subjective reality with extreme camerawork, fast editing, and sound effects. Frequent references to genre films and TV shows also blur the lines of reality, while outright dream sequences and fantasies are also very common.
• The Straight Will And Grace: Tim and Daisy share a flat, and both are single heterosexuals attempting the Masquerade of being a couple, nothing sexual happens between them. The audience's expectations of UST are the source of several misdirection jokes.

Characters

• The Libby: Daisy's friend Twist is as shallow as a saucer, quite vicious and uncaring of her friend's feelings. And a Fag Hag.
• Mad Artist: Brian is incredibly angsty and tortured (not to mention pretentious) though not in a dangerous way. He does find he's unable to paint when he's happy.
• Ambiguously Gay: Brian is quickly asked point-blank if he is gay, to which he denies after seeming to have just now realized it. He later claims to have had "a romance between two heterosexual men" with his "post-sexual" collaborator Vulva, whom he refers to as a she.
• She Who Must Not Be Seen: Marsha's daughter Amber, despite her constant rows, is only ever heard, or seen storming down the stairs. Played by the producer's sister in a wig.
• Mood Swinger: Tyres, who has such a short attention span that he can't sustain a single emotion for more than a few seconds.

Tropes

• Big No: Parodied, particularly in "Combat" after Mike takes a painball for Tim.
• Blood From The Mouth: Parodied with Mike's Taking The Bullet of a paintball pellet, which is set up earlier in the episode:
  "Now, I don't want you eating any of them this time."
• Daydream Surprise: And plenty of them. In some cases, Tim and Daisy break from the fantasy, then follow it up by doing exactly the same thing later.
• Ho Yay: Tim and Mike, so very much.
• Irrevocable Message: Tim's unflattering caricature of Damien Knox, which was of course inadvertently sent to Knox as part of a job application.
• Metaphorgotten: Daisy's likening of her failed relationship with Richard to a sandwich maker gets a bit off message, eventually leading to a Broken Aesop ("Ditch your boyfriend, have a sandwich")
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Daisy does not have a good time in the Job Centre: "No, this is the A-b form, you need the A-B form, capital B." The clerk responds to her questions with a simpering smile and an inane, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."
• Pac Man Fever: Averted, hard. Tim plays what were, at the time, relatively up-to-date video games, and the several scenes feature then very overtly.
  • And, in fact, Simon Pegg was actually playing the game through each take.
• Reverse Funny Aneurysm: "...as sure as eggs is eggs and every odd number Star Trek movie is shit." Sorry, what was that Scotty?
• Serious Business: Tim and Bilbo take their fantasy/sci-fi fandom extremely seriously. Tim was so disappointed by The Phanton Menace that he burned his Star Wars paraphernalia in a scene mirroring Darth Vader's cremation. Bilbo admits to punching out two people for describing Hawk The Slayer as "rubbish". One of them was his dad. Even still, he sacks Tim for verbally assaulting a child in search of a Jar Jar Binks doll. Then Tim's new boss sacks him for describing Babylon Five as "A big pile of shit". (Which Tim was hoping for).
• Shout Out, Homage, The Parody: By the bucket, of everything, including some rather obscure films and TV shows. The DVDs even have a subtitle track consisting purely of the sources of each reference. This troper and one of his flatmates once made a Drinking Game of identifying them and had to abandon it when unconsciousness loomed.
  • The subtitle track in question even sometimes references pure fictional references within the show. In one episode, Daisy is making up a story about working on a movie to impress someone, saying the movie's to be named Guacamole Window. The subtitle on that track then says "Film Ref: Quacamole Window, Directed by and starring Daisy Steiner."
• Smoking Hot Sex Vacuuming: Tim and Daisy decide to resolve the lingering issue between them when they first move in. Instead of screwing, it's cleaning the apartment.
• Taking The Bullet, Leap And Fire: Mike does both on a paintball trip, along with many other war tropes.
• The Paolo: Sophie
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Subverted: Mike moves in for a little while and when he leaves Daisy and Tim are actually disappointed.
• True Art Is Angsty: Brian's art is completely defined by negative emotions. He later finds that he can't paint when he is happy.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: Brian's friend Vulva performs incomprehensible performance art pieces that he finds ingenious. When Daisy tries her hand at a similarly ridiculous performance, Brian is moved to tears.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome: Scenes from films are re-enacted with a fraction of the budget, in far more mundane circumstances. Played for bathos or pastiche.
  • The gunfight.
  • The paintball duel. And Mike's Heroic Sacrifice, complete with Paint From The Mouth.

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