Spatz

I'm the only person I know who remembers this show, so it's nice to find out it wasn't in fact a figment of my imagination.

I was about 8 when I watched this, and all I can remember is fancying TJ something rotten, and being deeply jealous of Karen - even an 8 year old could see what was going on there. I also remember a scene where Karen dropped her contact lenses in a fish tank and had to wear glasses - years later I now sympathise - when she thought she'd found them she stamped on her glasses, but it was a fish egg or something.

This show would be worth repeating for kids (and adults) of today - you can find find the opening credits and a brief glimpse of an episode on Youtube - it really doesn't look very dated. I'd watch it!! Chalice

A funny kid's T.V. show about a group of workers in a London restaurant called Spatz. The two canadian managers were always at each others throats over how to run the restaurant (which was the only branch in Britain), stupid Stanley was just plain, well, stupid, and Dexter and Vince were the coolest dead-end restaurant workers in the mall.It had a great story every week and was thoroughly enjoyable for all ages.

I recall this being on YTV (Youth TeleVision), a Canadian cable network (still going). It was interesting watching a take on a Canadian business opening up in England. I had no idea that Vas Blackwood, whom I know from being Rory Breaker in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was in this as a regular! Loved the show at the time, would enjoy seeing it again. Hello, Netflix???

I just checked this out and I wanted to thank the writers of the comments about Spatz. We had a lot of fun doing the show and it is extremely gratifying to hear that it was so enjoyed. As to the comments about the sexual tension between Jenifer Calvert as Karen and myself, I think it really added something to the show. The writers of the show, Grant and Lee really gave us wonderful material to work with and the entire cast worked very hard to make the show work. Also, our primary director. Stan Swann deserves a lot of credit for the look and feel of the show, he was tireless and very patient. Once again thanks and best wishes to all those viewers. sincerely Paul Michael AKA TJ.

What made Spatz work so well was it's characters. Despite having a relatively large cast for such a simple concept, each character was extremely unique. There was: TJ Strickland, the Chanlder Bing type "manager" who couldn't say boo to a goose. Karen - the Eurpoean Co-ordinater who believed the only way to run a successful business was to shout as loudly as possible, treat the staff like dirt, and insult people on a regular basis. Dexter - the cool dude who who had great ambition and wanted to make it to the top, but by doing as little work as possible in the process. Vince, the cheeky chappy who always got into trouble. Stanley - thick as mince. Debbie - the sensible one of the group but was easily badly influenced. Toni - looked down her nose at the job and left to achieve greater things. Lilly - wanted to keep her head down and get on with things but always got caught up in the commotion. Jo - cheeky trouble maker who often teamed up with Vince. And Freddy - Jo's replacement who was equally cheeky and always had a story to tell.

While the situations that the staff landed themselves in each week were always amusing, what made them so funny was that in every case each character remained true to themselves, and always reacted by doing something that was fitting to their character as opposed to what would just be a funny thing to do. In turn this made it even funnier, and eventually some catch phrases and long running gags were established such as:

Karen never getting anyone's name right. The more angry Karen got, the more TJ wound her up with unfunny jokes. Debbie's engagement to a guy called Derek which she was constantly calling off. Freddy having a superstitious Scottish legend to tell for every occasion (Such as the Legend of the Great Hairy Bogey.) Dexter continuously sucking up to Karen with no success. Customers constantly being ignored or mistreated because they were getting in the way of good story lines!

This show was very well written, and while it was ultimately a children's show, some of the humour, especially between TJ and Karen could be quite adult at times. And as someone already mentioned, you could cut the sexual tension with a knife.