"Actor: Christopher Scoular"

• Shallow Grave | DVD | (17/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Possessed of startlingly fresh performances and a visual style of genuine panache, Shallow Grave was deservedly a BAFTA Best Film winner in 1994. This was clearly a film that deserved attention. Sure enough, the principal talents involved (Director Danny Boyle, Producer Andrew Macdonald, Writer John Hodge and actors Christopher Eccleston and Ewan McGregor) have gone on to huge successes both together (Trainspotting) and apart. The thriller's plot is simple enough: three flatmates take on a fourth (Keith Allen) who unexpectedly dies, leaving a mountain of cash behind. Who are your friends? Who can you trust? How far would you go for money? These are the questions facing Juliet (Kerry Fox), David (Eccleston) and Alex (McGregor) as the scenario spirals out of control around them. Somehow no matter what they do, the decisions seem to lead to one gruesome event after another. The film's often breakneck pace--backed by tunes from Leftfield--quickly became a much-copied style. Most agree that the copies pale beside the original, and this ice-cold morality poser remains the best view of post-80s greed on screen. On the DVD: Although presented in widescreen anamorphic format, both picture and sound are not much better than an average video playback. Add a static menu and just one trailer and this release will probably disappoint today's DVD collector. --Paul Tonks

• Hannay: The Complete Series | DVD | (12/09/2016) from £20.98   |  Saving you £21.00 (110.58%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Robert Powell reprises one of his most famous roles, that of Edwardian adventurer Richard Hannay, in this hit drama series spinning out of John Buchan's thrilling tales of derring-do most famously, the classic novel The Thirty-Nine Steps. This release comprises both action-packed series, with guest appearances from Martin Clunes, Alex Kingston, Charles Gray, Oliver Cotton, Phyllis Logan, Iain Cuthbertson and Anthony Valentine. Having forged a successful career as a mining engineer, prospector and military intelligence officer in South Africa, Richard Hannay returns to Britain amid the mounting tensions of pre-First World War Europe. His plans to settle down are dashed, however, when the naval arms race between Britain and Imperial Germany enters a dangerous new phase and his ingenuity is stretched to its limit by the ever-inventive schemes of his ruthless arch-enemy, Count Otto von Schwabing...

• Lord Peter Wimsey - Strong Poison | DVD | (11/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Edward Petherbridge stars as the aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey in this who-dun-nit from the pen of Dorothy L. Sayers. Mystery writer Harriet Vane is on trial for the murder of her lover. The evidence seems pretty conclusive. Not an hour after leaving her flat Philip Boyles was found dead in the back of a taxi cab - from arsenic posioning. Wimsey attends the trial and becomes beguiled by the writer. He also becomes convinced of her innocence of the crime. When the jury

• Lord Peter Wimsey - Clouds Of Witness | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Based on the series of novels written by Dorothy L Sayers in the 1920s and 30s, Lord Peter Wimsey was dramatised for TV by the BBC between 1972-5. Ian Carmichael, veteran of British film comedy, played the genial, aristocratic sleuth; Glyn Houston was his manservant Bunter. The pair are similar to PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Bertie Wooster (whom Carmichael played in an earlier TV adaptation) though here the duo are equal in intelligence, breezing about the country together in Wimsey's Bentley and stumbling with morbid regularity upon baffling murder mysteries to test their wits. Those for whom this series forms hazy memories of childhood might be surprised at its somewhat stagy, lingering interior shots, the spartan paucity of music, the miserly attitude towards locations, especially foreign ones, and the rather genteel, leisurely pace of these programmes, besides which Inspector Morse seems like Quentin Tarantino in comparison. It seems that initially the BBC was reluctant to commission the series and ventured on production with a wary eye on the budget. The Britain depicted by Sayers is, by and large, populated by either the upper classes or heavily accented, rum-do-and-no-mistake lower orders, which some might find consoling. However, the acting is generally excellent and the murder mysteries are sophisticated parlour games, the televisual equivalent of a good, absorbing jigsaw puzzle. There were five feature-length adaptations in all. "Clouds of Witness" sees Wimsey investigate the death of his brother the Duke of Denver's fiancée. --David Stubbs