The work of Edgar Wright
Spaced (1998)
A sometimes bizarre, sometimes dark, often brilliant sitcom about the inhabitants of a London squat, which first introduced us to the talents of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Jessica Stephenson (now Hynes), and launched Wright as a directorial talent.
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Wright’s second, but really his first, feature film was, theoretically, a spoof of zombie films (and particularly Dawn of the Dead), but understood that to parody you have to love – and so was right on spec when it came to the horror bits. But really, its brilliance was the tiny observational details of everyday life and relationships, and the genuine humour throughout. Pegg plays slacker Shaun, who stumbles his way through a zombie apocalypse that engulfs London. Frost plays his best mate, a pattern that would repeat thereafter.
Hot Fuzz (2007)
The second in what became known as Wright’s ‘‘Cornetto trilogy’’ was a police pastiche set in a rural English country town in which Pegg and Frost played an odd couple of crusading coppers who unmask a ridiculous plot, and was particularly notable for having about six endings and a string of farcical death scenes. Seeing Timothy Dalton impaled upon the steeple of a church in a model village is a particular highlight.
Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)
Wright’s first trans-Atlantic foray took him to Canada, where Michael Cera and Wright’s sometime girlfriend Anna Kendrick appeared in a comic book adaptation that was not a box office hit.
The World’s End (2013)
The concluding part of the Cornetto trilogy started as a buddy film of old schoolmates reunited and had enough to say about the nature of such friendships that it could have happily continued in that vein – but instead it skews off into an alien invasion farce in which Pegg and Frost – but this time, with Pegg playing the idiot of the pairing – trying to complete a pub crawl around their old hometown while killing as many aliens as possible. Probably a bit critically under-rated.