Hott Fuzz (15) British comedy thriller about a super cop, starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Timothy Dalton.

TOP police constable Nicholas Angel is so good at his job that he makes everyone else look bad. As a result, his superiors at the Met try to sweep him under the carpet by pushing London's top cop into the sleepy West Country village of Sandford.

With garden fetes and neighbourhood watch meetings replacing the action of the city, Angel struggles to adapt to his new situation and finds himself partnered by Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), an oafish but well meaning young constable. Just as all seems lost, however, a series of grisly incidents motivates Angel into action.

Convinced of foul play, Angel realises that Sandford may not be as idyllic as it seems. With his faithful new partner in tow, Angel fights to prove his instincts are correct and uncover the truth about Sandford.

Is Angel simply losing his mind in the safest, sweetest village in Britain? Or is something far more sinister at work? Whatever the truth, Sandford is about to get a lot less sleepy.

When Edgar Wright (director) and Simon Pegg (star), co-creators of the 2004 hit rom-zom-com Shaun of the Dead were looking for a new film project, the answer had more than a close link to Wright's past.

Growing up in the small city of Wells in Somerset, Wright had been something of an inveterate watcher of cop movies, often staying up through the night to get his fix. "I didn't have a video recorder until I was 17," laughs Wright. "I stayed up and watched TV. I did have a particular fixation with the cop films, but particularly any of the Dirty Harry films and all the '80s films like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard."

Wright proposed that the pair did for the action movie what Shaun Of The Dead had done for the zombie movie: filter a particularly American genre through a peculiarly British prism, add several lumps of humour and serve. So was born the idea for Hot Fuzz.

"There's a great tradition of British crime films, but hardly any British cop movies, so that was what we're hoping to address," explains Wright. "And very few British cop movies actually use the iconography of the uniformed policeman. If you talk to people from other countries, they say, "isn't it funny with their helmets and they haven't got any guns, oh it's so cute!" So how do we, a) make a big British genre film about British bobbies and, b) how do we get lots of guns into it?"

Despite the enjoyment of watching a stream of films under the guise of research', what really convinced Pegg to turn up the heat and feel the Fuzz was a period of intense research he and Wright undertook with police officers not only in London, but in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

"We interviewed a lots of officers in London and we also went round about maybe 15 rural stations and spent a week going around interviewing different police officers and that was brilliant because they were so helpful and so kind of candid, and just lots of amazing details came out," says Pegg.

Many of those details made it into the film, such as a brief mention of a hierarchy of sugary snacks which tardy officers are forced to buy; while Angel's police number came from a real-life PC with whom Wright and Pegg went on an eventful ride-along.

"This guy's number is 777 which we wanted Angel to be because it's the divine number," explains Pegg. "We were driving down a country lane in Somerset when a voice came over the radio saying there are some hippy types out in the Kwik-Save car park vandalising the recycling bins!' "He stuck on the Blues and Twos (lights and sirens) and we went hurtling down this country lane at 85 mph, and me and Edgar were like oh my god!' But when we got there, it had been resolved so he had to drive round the corner so that no-one would see before he switched the lights off!"

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in a scene from the new comedy, Hot Fuzz.