Simon Pegg

Rebecca Front stars in Up the Women, written by Jessica Hynes, who co-penned the rather brilliant Spaced (1999-2001) but who, strangely, has never received the same acclaim as her co-writer Simon Pegg.

Up the Women is traditional in its format - it's set mostly in one room, in this instance a village hall where the Bunbury Intricate Crafts Circle meet. It's 1910, and one of BICC's members, Margaret (Hynes) has been seduced by Suffragettism while on a day trip to London. The group's self-appointed bossy-boots leader Helen (Front), meanwhile, is having none of it when Margaret meekly suggests the group might support women's emancipation - "Women should not have the vote. We are simple, emotional creatures."

Margaret is a brainy woman who has long since accepted that women must always defer to men, even those markedly less intelligent, and a good running gag involved her explaining electricity to the overbearing caretaker (Adrian Scarborough), who was struggling to fit a new-fangled lightbulb.

The characters - particularly Vicki Pepperdine's toothy spinster - are drawn in broad strokes, and occasionally the humour (peonies being misheard for penis, for instance) is groaningly obvious. But there are some neat lines too, and superb acting from a fantastic cast who look like they're enjoying themselves, including Judy Parfitt doing a nice turn as Helen's decidedly naughty mother, Myrtle, sexually liberated long before the term was invented by the Pankhursts' spiritual daughters. Worth staying with.

Ideal couch potato fare for a Friday night. Chuck that ready meal into the microwave and sit back for this easily consumable Britcom. Simon Pegg blatantly isn't a porker but, otherwise, the Shaun Of The Dead star is well cast as Dennis, a low-ambition man-child whose loser status is confirmed when he leaves Thandie Newton at the altar. Fast forward a few years and he wants to win her back, particularly after she looks like she might hook up with a smoothy-chops exec played by Hank Azaria. When the two men enter the London Marathon, the contest starts to heat up. It's untaxing and predictable, offering a few surprising snorts of laughter. The most memorable oddities are Dylan Moran as the Rhys-Ifans-from-Notting-Hill-type best friend and the fact this is the feature film directorial debut by David 'Ross from Friends' Schwimmer.

Simon Pegg talks about The World's End

He discussed the soundtrack that he and Wright have put together for the film, how his writing process with Edgar Wright on The World's End compared to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuz, bringing every actor that appeared in the previous two films back for The World's End, the possibility of a Comic-Con screening, and more.

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Following up a cult comedy hit like Shaun Of The Dead was a tough call but co-stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright triumph here. Part two in their 'Cornetto trilogy' (Part three, The World's End, is out in August) casts Pegg as an eager-beaver cop whose over-achievement makes him unpopular with colleagues. Shipped off to a sleepy backwater and teamed with a laid-back bozo (Frost), he is surprised to find village life isn't as innocent as it first seems.

A comedy that gets funnier every time you rewatch it, this brilliantly parodies Hollywood studio action buddy-movies such as Bad Boys. We love that its sole raison d' être was allowing Pegg and Frost to live their movie dream of getting to shoot guns in both hands while leaping in slow motion.

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The World's End - the third and final part of Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost's genre-skewing trilogy that kicked off with Shaun of the Dead and continued with Hot Fuzz - is set to hit screens in the UK this August.