"Actor: Helen Fraser"

• Bad Girls - Series 7 | DVD | (07/08/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  The Bad Girls are back for more drama from HMP Larkhall where the staff are just as guilty as the prisoners! Includes all 12 episodes plus the bonus Christmas Special.

• Bad Girls - Series One | DVD | (18/06/2001) from £24.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (60.02%)   |  RRP £39.99

  If the concept of a TV drama set in a woman's prison was one potentially fraught with cliché, the critical and commercial success of Bad Girls is a testament to fine writing, performance and production. With no preamble or scene setting, Series 1 immediately plunges the viewer into the world of Larkhall Prison, its inmates and staff. This approach leaves the characters to reveal themselves at varying pace, with each episode bringing new details about their life on the outside. Given the nature of the setting, it is unsurprising that the show is an ensemble, female-dominated piece. Simone Lahbib, Mandana Jones and Debra Stephenson are all excellent in the three key roles, with impressive support throughout the cast. Male characters are generally relegated to the sidelines, with the exception of sleazy warden Jim Fenner (played with skin crawling accuracy by Jack Ellis). The sexual realities of the environment are handled realistically and sensitively, and not for nothing is the word "uncut" splashed across the cover: there are some quite disturbing scenes, especially in the earlier episodes. On the DVD: The DVD enhances the show's attempts to capture the atmosphere of prison, with sharp contrast between light and darkness and the constant barracking, cat-calling and snide asides sounding crisp, clear and suitably nasty. Of the impressive 70 minutes of extra features much will only be of real interest to absolute devotees. A documentary examining work on the forthcoming third series may go into admirable detail, but how much interest a costume truck can actually be is perhaps debatable. The footage itself is a little unpolished, but does provide the cast members with an opportunity to reveal themselves, as does the extensive interview section. Not only do the main actors give valuable insights into their characters, but it is also interesting to see how the process has influenced their opinions on the prison system. A feature on a book signing in London certainly puts the show into an audience context, but the collection of outtakes (presented in a, supposedly intentionally, amateurish and tacky manner by Lahbib) is at best superfluous. There is more than a hint of trying to find material to fill the space, but overall this is an impressive effort. --Phil Udell

• Rising Damp | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £5.79   |  Saving you £4.20 (72.54%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A genuine British comedy classic the popularity of 'Rising Damp' remains unparalleled some 25 years after the first transmission. 'Rising Damp' detailed the day-to-day events at Rigsby's dingy boarding-house in Eric Chappell's hilarious sitcom. The landlord from hell Rupert Rigsby prowled around his dilapidated eyrie poking his nose into his lodgers' affairs. In this feature length movie Rigsby (Leonard Rossiter) is still intending to make Miss Jones (Frances De La Tour) his wi

• The Birthday Party | DVD | (02/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Harold Pinter's first full-length stage play, The Birthday Party, was 10 years old when William (The Exorcist) Friedkin directed it for the cinema in 1968. In some ways, it was already a period-piece by then, Pinter's use of a combination of silence and excruciatingly banal dialogue to generate precipitous dramatic tension having been absorbed by contemporary theatrical mythology long since. Are the sinister McCann and Goldberg real? Or do they exist only in Stan's head? At the end, we're none the wiser. But Friedkin's claustrophobic direction, with the tormented Stan as its focus, has taken us through a master study in understated horror. The handheld camera, so fashionable in modern television drama, has rarely been used to such hypnotic effect. As Stan, Robert Shaw is mesmerising in his descent to animal-like submission. Sydney Tafler's Goldberg and Patrick Magee 's McCann make a truly terrifying double act. Cult television fans will appreciate an early appearance by Helen Fraser (these days best known as a sadistic prison warder in Bad Girls) as the easily seduced neighbour. Now that Friedkin's film is itself over 30 years old, the scent of mothballs ought to be even more pronounced. Its decrepit seaside boarding house setting and the drabness of the peripheral players are redolent of the distinctly non-swinging side of the 1960s in which it was made. But more than anything, The Birthday Party is about unspecified terror and the sort of inner demons that lurk in all of us. On the DVD: Excellent sound quality helps to make this a compellingly theatrical experience: never has the noise of tearing newspaper been more menacing. And the picture quality retains the grainy authenticity of the original print. Special features include brief backgrounders on the history of the play and Friedkin's career, and a slide show of still s from key scenes. --Piers Ford

• Rising Damp: The Works | DVD | (14/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Featuring all the episodes from Series 1 to 4 including: 'Rooksby' 'Black Magic' 'Charisma' 'Night Out' 'All Our Yesterdays' 'The Prowler' 'Permissive Society' 'Food Glorious Food' 'A Body Like Mine' 'The Perfect Gentleman' 'The Last Of The Big Spenders' 'Things That Go Bump In The Night' and 'Moonlight And Roses'. Includes the unreleased episode 'Stand Up And Be Counted'.

• Bad Girls - Series 3 | DVD | (25/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Separated from their homes children and lovers the female inmates of HMP Larkhalls continue to struggle with the harsh reality of life in this hidden world. Bad Girls Series 3 doesn't shy away from the cruelties and tense relationships inside the prison but also captures the warmth and humour the women need to survive the system. This DVD release features all 16 episodes across 5 discs.

• Man About The House - Series 1 | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £8.95   |  Saving you £4.04 (31.10%)   |  RRP £12.99

  One of Thames TV's most successful sitcoms about the ups and downs of mixed flat-sharing. Three's A Crowd: Chrissy and Jo throw a farewell party for their flatmate who's getting engaged and moving out. Next morining they find Robin asleep in their bath. They're looking for a new flatmate and Robin is looking for somewhere to live so the girls ask Robin to stay. All they have to do then is to talk the Ropers into agreeing to the new arrangement... And Mother Makes Four: Chrissy's mother is about to pay a visit. She doesn't know Robin is living in the flat so he's told to make himself scarce. Then Chrissy's mother decides to stay the night... Some Enchanted Evening: Jo's new boyfriend is coming to the flat for a meal. Robin is persuaded to cook it. Then he and Chrissy have to spend the evening playing monopoly with the Ropers. They learn that Chrissy's boyfriend is Jewish - and Robin has cooked roast pork for their meal! And Then There Were Two: Chrissy is very nervous when Jo goes away for the weekend and leaves her alone in the flat with Robin. Robin brings another woman back only for Chrissy to sabotage his plans for a night of passion. It's Only Money: The rent is due and the money put aside to pay it has disappeared from the flat. Robin Chrissy and Jo have to find a way of getting some more money quickly... Match Of The Day: Robin has been picked to play in a college football match. A few days before the game he goes down with a bad cold. Chrissy and Jo rally round in an attempt to help him to recover in time to play. No CHildren No Dogs: Robin accidentally acquires a puppy. The lease on the flat says 'no pets' so Roper mustn't find out...

• Northanger Abbey | DVD | (07/11/2005) from £7.14   |  Saving you £8.85 (123.95%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A tale of intrigue adventure and romance. This enchanting BBC dramatization captures the spirit and wit of Austen's classic novel Northanger Abbey. The setting is eighteenth-century Bath a society of decadence and deceit into which Catherine Morland arrives bursting with freshness integrity and a passion for macabre Gothic novels. In a time when materialism not love governs marriage Catherine's head is full of fantasy and fiction of maidens being abducted to sinister c

• Repulsion | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Carol a young girl living in Sixties' London is repelled yet fascinated by men. Her radiant beauty attracts the opposite sex but she shrinks from their advances. Her days are spent in an intensely feminine atmosphere: working in a beauty salon and clinging to her sister Helen for love. But as she incarcerates herself in her sinister shadowy flat men begin to invade her dreams night and day mixing her terror with delight as bizarre hallucinations take hold of her mind. The

• Bad Girls - Series 5 | DVD | (23/08/2004) from £18.99   |  Saving you £31.00 (163.24%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Bad Girls is about a closed world governed by petty rules and harsh punishments. Where women prisoners and officers are thrown together in intense physical and emotional relationships. Left outside their homes their partners and their children. And inside they must negiotiate their position in the prisoners' hierarchy and.... make new sexual choices.... Features all 16 episodes from Series 5.

• Billy Liar | DVD | (11/09/2006) from £14.83   |  Saving you £-1.84 (-14.20%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Tom Courtenay gives a flawlessly nuanced performance as Billy Fisher the underachieving undertaker's assistant whose constant daydreams and truth-deficient stories earn him the nickname ""Billy Liar."" Julie Christie is the handbag-swinging charmer whose free spirit just might inspire Billy to finally move out of his parents' house. Deftly veering from gritty realism to flamboyant fantasy Billy Liar is a dazzling and uproarious classic.

• Billy Liar | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £11.39   |  Saving you £5.59 (66.55%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Billy Liar was the multimedia phenomenon of its era. Starting out as a novel by Yorkshire writer Keith Waterhouse, it rapidly became a long-running stage play, adapted by Waterhouse with playwright Willis Hall, which lead to the movie, scripted by Waterhouse and Hall for John Schlesinger to direct, then a stage musical and finally a spin-off TV series. Do you get the feeling it caught the mood of the times? The basic set-up owes a lot to James Thurber's classic short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Our hero, Billy Fisher, lives at home in a Bradford semi with his nagging parents and works as a lowly clerk in an undertaker's parlour. But, in his imagination he lives a rich and varied fantasy life as gallant military leader, suave socialite, best-selling novelist and so forth. Trouble is, he can't always keep fantasy and reality apart, any more than he can the keep two girls he's engaged to separate. Not to mention his other problems…. Schlesinger's direction brings out the desperation behind the comedy, and Tom Courtenay, at once defiant and hangdog, slips perfectly into the role created on stage by Albert Finney. But the whole cast's a joy, not least the great Leonard Rossiter as undertaker Mr Shadrach, Billy's saturnine boss. And then there's Julie Christie--the luminous spirit of the Swinging 60s--in her first starring role as the girl who offers Billy a chance of real escape. At the end, when she takes the train to London, away from the smoke and the grimness "oop" north, the whole British New Wave went with her. On the DVD: just the theatrical trailer which is a fairly crass affair. There's been no remastering, it seems, but both sound and vision are clean enough and the print preserves the original's full 2.35:1 widescreen ratio. --Philip Kemp

• Rising Damp - The Complete 1st Series | DVD | (07/05/2001) from £10.46   |  Saving you £4.53 (43.31%)   |  RRP £14.99

  First broadcast in 1974, the ITV bedsitland sitcom Rising Damp was an instant and enduring success. It starred Leonard Rossiter as the miserly and lovelorn landlord Rigsby who is constantly needling young lodger Alan (Richard Beckinsale), a science student whose long hair and earrings are symptomatic to Rigsby of the parlous effeminacy of the modern age. He's also in love with Frances De La Tour's dowdy spinster Miss Jones, though his tentative advances are forever rebuffed. She in turn carries a torch for Philip (Don Warrington), the elegant son of an African chief who also resides at Rigsby Towers. Some aspects of Rising Damp have not aged well, principally Rigsby's stream of racist jibes at Philip. Although these were doubtless well-meant and supposed to illustrate Rigsby's foolish bigotry, you suspect that that was a convenient cover for audiences in the 1970s to enjoy racist humour. However, Rossiter's Rigsby--stuttering, stammering, bent perpetually over backwards--remains a great comic creation, embodying all the festering prejudices, small-mindedness and self-delusion of the lower middle class Little Englander. --David Stubbs

• Repulsion | Blu Ray | (24/03/2017) from £11.19   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Roman Polanski's psychological drama was his first English-language feature. A young Belgian woman (Catherine Deneuve) is left alone in a Kensington apartment when her sister goes away. She becomes increasingly unstable, experiencing hallucinations which have their roots in her fear of male sexuality. When two aggressive men turn up, her tortured nightmares spill into real life violence.

• Bad Girls - Series 2 | DVD | (01/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Few television dramas of recent years have managed to combine quality and popularity as successfully as Bad Girls. Series two of the women's-prison drama offers essentially more of the same, but the formula is so well honed that it would be churlish to complain. The main characters and storylines are still there, with the relationship that began between Nikki and Helen (Mandana Jones and Simone Lahbib) at the end of the first series brought eloquently and stylishly to centre stage--a result of both superb writing and performance. The show is given fresh impetus by the constant introduction of new characters. The resulting plot lines see the growing influence of the superb Yyvonne, the unhinged prison officer Di and a new wing governor Karen Betts added to the equation, all with explosive results. The mixture of humour and drama is, as ever, played to perfection.On the DVD: Having set an impressive standard with the DVD release of series one, Bad Girls continues to lead the field for television drama releases. Again the packaging of the four-disc set is handy but extremely stylish and comes with a whole series of extras. The documentary this time follows the cast on a promotional trip to South Africa and there are two galleries of photographs, deleted scenes, production and cast notes and a mass of outtakes that beg the question how they ever actually managed to make one programme, let alone the 13 included here, without the whole cast convulsing with laughter. --Phil Udell

• Bad Girls Series Seven | DVD | (20/02/2012) from £7.99   |  Saving you £18.00 (225.28%)   |  RRP £25.99

  Bad Girls Series Seven brings more compelling drama from behind the bars of HMP Larkhall. The series opens with Jim Fenner behind bars but is there anything that his new wife Di won’t do to ensure his freedom? Escape, murder, mental breakdown and child prostitution all serve to keep this hard hitting series set in a women’s prison as riveting as ever.This three disc set includes all thirteen episodes from the seventh series including the Christmas Special.

• Bad Girls Series Eight | DVD | (02/04/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £25.99

  Bad Girls Series Eight brings more dramatic storylines from women’s prison HMP Larkhall. This is the final series of the controversial and ground breaking television drama series. Suspected terrorism, murder, suicide, infidelity and pregnancy – resulting in a secret birth behind bars – keep us guessing until the very end. This three disc set includes all eleven episodes from the eighth and final series. Special Features: Subtitles Photo Gallery

• Bad Girls - Series 4 | DVD | (09/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  All sixteen fully uncut episodes of the fourth season of conflicts crises chaos and camaraderie from inside HMP Larkhall...

• Bad Girls Series Six | DVD | (26/12/2011) from £19.97   |  Saving you £6.02 (30.15%)   |  RRP £25.99

  Bad Girls Series Six brings more rivetting drama from within the walls of HMP Larkhall. The series opens with the prisoners assuming that top dog Yvonne Atkins has made her escape and is lying low. However, that all changes when fellow inmate Kris attempts her own bid for freedom. Has Fenner's luck finally run out this time? The series also receives a glamour injection in the form of Tanya Turner (Zoe Lucker) serving time from Footballers' Wives. This three disc set includes all twelve episodes from the sixth series.

• The Likely Lads | DVD | (24/12/2007) from £4.49   |  Saving you £15.50 (345.21%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of the best British sitcoms of all-time, The Likely Lads focuses on the friendship between two working-class men, James Bolam and Rodney Bewes, living in the north east of England.Bob (Bewes) is the 'sensible' one, doing his best to get on with his job and 'better' himself. Terry (Bolam) is the 'irresponsible' one, intent on living life to the full. He's forever getting himself (and Terry) into trouble of one kind or another...Episodes Comprise:1. Entente Cordiale2. Double Date3. Older Women Are More Experienced4. The Suitor5. The Last Of The Big Spenders6. Rocker7. Goodbye To All That