> Nobody drinks and carouses like they do, nobody has their sense of chivalry, artistry and old-fashioned justice. The world has lost its colour, its joy and its sense of fairness, and they are loyal to an institution which is itself corrupted and whose time is clearly ending. And so they are lost: they have no cause and they are slowly destroying themselves.

If you wrote it set in the present day, they'd be a bunch of 50-somethings pining for the 90s, bucket hats, blasting Pablo Honey and Modern Life Is Rubbish from the Sharp "Full Auto Reverse" in the Astra, and bemoaning how you can't get decent E and no-one gets in fights any more. They probably own very expensive guitars, too, that they can't really play. The Kia e-Niro will run out of battery at the most inconvenient time leaving our trio stranded on their way to retrieve the stolen diamond to pay off the local councillor Ritchley, who is really fronting for a shadowy property developer who he is very much in love with but has no chance with.

They all dream of one day leaving Swindon.

Athos, Porthos and Aramis are Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Dylan Moran, Ritchley is Bill Nighy, and Milady is Tamsin Greig.

Quite a lot of people absolutely hate it, but somehow still have a pirate copy squirrelled away.

I can't believe I didn't catch the reference until Swindon.

Yeah — quite a lot of "let's get the gang back together to fight the old enemy which is reorganising with the new enemy" films borrow quite heavily from it, I think. Especially because there's almost always a newbie who has heard all the stories (some of them untrue, some of them edited) — someone's recently disclosed lovechild, some kid who was kept safe in prison by one of their dead friends, etc.