"Actor: Birdy Sweeney"

• The Crying Game | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  An IRA film with a difference, Neil Jordan's The Crying Game takes the Anglo-Irish conflict as the starting point for a thoughtful, often poignant and sometimes humorous examination of gender and identity. Stephen Rea is the IRA volunteer who befriends a kidnapped British soldier (the gauche but likeable Forest Whitaker), then takes the questions of loyalty and instinct (the "frog and scorpion" fable) with him to London, where he falls for the dead man's girlfriend (the appealing Jaye Davidson). Love and terrorism are fused in a violent and suspenseful denouement, where truth manifests itself in an unexpected yet meaningful way. Miranda Richardson and Adrian Dunbar are persuasive as the IRA agents, and there are excellent cameos from Jim Broadbent as an East End barman and Tony Slattery as a property shark, all making the most of Jordan's stylish, Academy Award-winning script. Anne (Art of Noise) Dudley contributes a moodily atmospheric score, with three versions of "When a Man Loves a Woman" to point up the gender issue. On the DVD: The Crying Game comes to disc with a widescreen picture that reproduces adequately for an early 90s film. The soundtrack, though, has real presence. There are subtitles in English and Russian(!), though the theatrical trailer is hardly a major bonus. An interview or a commentary with Jordan, discussing the motivation behind the project, would really have benefited a film which cuts across genres so successfully as this. --Richard Whitehouse

• Ballykissangel - Series 2 | DVD | (10/10/2005) from £13.01   |  Saving you £6.98 (53.65%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Young priest Father Peter Clifford (Stephen Tompkinson) arrives in the small Irish town of Ballykissangel. Captivated by local beauty Assumpta (Dervla Kirwan) he is unpopular from the outset and has to work hard to win over the eccentric inhabitants... Episodes comprise: 1. For One Night Only 2. River Dance 3. In the Can 4. The Facts of Life 5. Someone to Watch over Me 6. Only Skin Deep 7. Money Money Money 8. Chinese Whispers

• Ballykissangel - Season 3 | DVD | (20/02/2006) from £15.14   |  Saving you £9.85 (65.06%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The third series of Kieran Prendiville's gentle comedy drama which became a fixture of the Sunday night schedule for BBC1. Episodes comprise: 1. When A Child Is Born 2. Changing Time 3. Stardust In Your Eyes 4. The Fortune In Men's Eyes 5. I Know When I'm Not Wanted 6. Personal Call 7. Lost Sheep 8. The Waiting Game 9. Pack Up Your Troubles 10. The Reckoning 11. Amongst Friends

• The Nephew | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £4.94   |  Saving you £1.05 (21.26%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Chad arrives in Ireland a few days after the death of his mother who had emigrated to America twenty years earlier. When he becomes friendly with a local girl it seems there is friction between her father and his late mother's brother...

• Ballykissangel - Series 4 | DVD | (10/04/2006) from £18.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (31.60%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The fourth series of Kieran Prendiville's gentle comedy drama which became a fixture of the Sunday night schedule for BBC1. This series introduces Colin Farrell (yep the Hollywood bad-boy and the title lead in Alexander) as Danny Byrne who would go on to star in series 5 and 6. Episodes Comprise: 1. All Bar One 2. He Healeth the Sick 3. Bread and Water 4. Par for the Course 5. The Odd Couple 6. Turf 7. It's a Family Affair 8. Rock Bottom 9. As Stars Loo

• Downtime | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Down Time is a strange attempt to mix concrete Northern social realism and Bruce-Willis-style cliffhanger thrills, with balls of fire billowing up empty lift shafts and so forth. Paul McGann plays an ex-police psychologist, retired through ill health, drafted in to dissuade miserable single mother Chrissy (Susan Lynch) from throwing herself and her child off the top of a tower block. He succeeds, though in so doing betrays some of the problems that caused him to quit his job. He then pursues Chrissy romantically, during the course of which he, she and her little boy become stuck in the tower block lift, which then starts ascending and descending at random when hoodlum squatters break into the control box and mess about with it for an idle laugh. With its bizarre and somewhat improbable scenario, its odd mix of whimsical light romance, grim-up-North-style melodrama and explosive stunt action, Down Time as a whole doesn't really come off. The behaviour of key characters borders on the arbitrary, the "yobs" who cause all the problems go curiously unpunished and the ending barely makes sense. However, the lengthy mid-sequence in which McGann rescues (and is rescued by) Chrissy from the perilously dangling lift is, though predictable in its outcome, gripping enough. --David Stubbs