"Actor: Carole Vincent"

• Big Brother - Uncut 2 | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £5.55   |  Saving you £7.44 (134.05%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Hitting back with a second series, the Big Brother phenomenon looks set to continue into the foreseeable future. Many critics of the show predicted that the concept had run out of steam by the end of its first series, and the nonchalance of the new contestants in the Big Brother house--who all seemed rather insipid compared to the likes of Nasty Nick--appeared to confirm their worst fears. However, the unashamedly voyeuristic nature of the show made the sequel almost as much of a success as the first one, topping Channel 4's ratings for weeks on end, and fuelling pub conversations across the country over the summer of 2001. With national papers backing their favourite candidates and the final public vote for the winner beating the turn out for the 2001 General Election, the series' formula appears to have plenty of mileage in it yet. This compilation brings you the best and worst of the household's antics: from Brian's comedy moments to Paul and Helen's will--they-won't-they audience grabber. --Nikki Disney

• Big Brother - Uncut 3 | DVD | (09/09/2002) from £12.39   |  Saving you £0.60 (4.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  With more walkers than your average Gary Lineker advert Big Brother 3 got off to a rocky start in losing Sunita (she said she wasn't having fun, but she'd probably realised she would be voted out in the first few weeks) and having Sandy offer us his re-enactment of The Great Escape. At this point the series seemed doomed: the remaining housemates hardly looked like the most entertaining of suspects. Then the media stepped in and turned Jade into Jabba the Hut's sister and Tim into "Nice but Dim". There were also a few hints of romance and some fumbling under the sheets, but all amounted to nothing with confessions of love only occurring after the contestants had left the house. You can choose to succumb to voyeurism or attempt to hide from it, but love it or hate it, no-one can escape the media juggernaut that is Channel 4's favourite reality TV show. On the DVD: Big Brother Uncut 3 offers the best and worst of the households antics in Dolby Digital 2.0 and 4:3 picture ratio--but come on, would you really want to listen to Jade in full surround-sound glory? The DVD extras are pretty standard fare for the BB releases, with multiple angle viewings of the "Word Game" and "Aqua Fun", which basically means you get to see the girls naked from any angle. Along with this you get the embarrassing audition tapes, which make you wonder just why this lot were picked in the first place. But then no sane person would want to enter the Big Brother House, would they? To prove this, comic character Avid Merrion offers his own audition tapes with their bizarre mix of Euro Trash and psycho-stalker extraordinaire--more of which can be seen in Channel 4's comedy Bo' Selecta. --Nikki Disney

• Summer Things (Embrassez Qui Vous Voudrez) | DVD | (17/05/2004) from £4.98   |  Saving you £15.01 (301.41%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Bourgeois housewife Elizabeth takes a holiday by the sea and as identities are mistaken and amorous adventures sparked off, it becomes a vacation to remember.

• Big Brother - Uncut - The Official Video | DVD | (11/12/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Big Brother was the TV event of 2000. The set-up--put 10 members of the public in a specially constructed house, keep them under 24-hour surveillance and watch them sweat out the weekly evictions of one of their number, voted by us, the public--was derived from a hugely successful Dutch programme, and gripping, unmissable stuff it proved to be over here, too. Because you already know the outcome--and if you don't, where were you last summer--the game-show aspect of the programme doesn't really work on DVD or video. But that was never really the point. It was the personalities involved that made the show such compulsive viewing, and they remain as lively as ever.On Big Brother--Uncut and the DVD To add some spice, Channel 4 have included scenes that were "too hot" for television: when Nicola decides to do some nude body painting, we see a bit more flesh now; some of the conversations between the contestants are a bit saucier than the original broadcast versions; and there are some hilarious close-ups of a few of the housemates picking their nose. But the best thing about Big Brother: Uncut is what made the whole show such big news in the first place: Nasty Nick's downfall, here played out in all its excruciating detail.Given what we know about him, it's fun to see Nick try his hand at some team-building exercises the producers designed to select the 10 contestants before the programme aired. This scene is also included on "Inside Big Brother", a making-of documentary accompanying "Big Brother: Uncut". Made while the Big Brother show was still being broadcast, there's an agreeable urgency to this programme. The Channel 4 producers interviewed here seem a little bewildered by the show's success. John Del Mol, the co-creator of the Dutch show, hazards a guess that the British show was such a hit because it was so well cast, and there's a fascinating look into the design of the house--"penal chic" was the effect they were after. Also included in this package are profiles of the various contestants, but these feel a little redundant, if only because, over the course of the show, we learn a lot more about the housemates than what's on these skimpy resumes. The profiles do, however, tell us that most of the contestants harbour show-biz ambitions. Now, why is that not a surprise? --Edward Lawrenson