"Actor: Hilton McRae"

• The French Lieutenant's Woman | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £9.95   |  Saving you £3.04 (30.55%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Writer Harold Pinter (Betrayal) and director Karel Reisz (Isadora) take an experimental spin with John Fowles's magnificent novel set in Victorian England, and come up with something puzzling. Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep play the forbidden lovers in Fowles's story, but in a parallel story line they also play contemporary actors performing those characters in a movie production and having an affair of their own during off-hours. Got that? Considering that Fowles himself presents alternative endings in his novel, something equally eccentric is called for here. But little is accomplished by this intertwining of a fictional past and present, and the opportunity to do justice to a great story is lost. On the plus side, Irons and Streep are instantly striking as a natural couple on screen, and their presence makes watching The French Lieutenant's Woman easy enough despite the larger problems. --Tom Keogh

• French Lieutenant's Woman (Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (30/03/2020) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  An astounding array of talent came together for the big-screen adaptation of John Fowles's novel The French Lieutenant's Woman, a postmodern masterpiece that had been considered unfilmable. With an ingenious script by the Nobel Prizewinning playwright HAROLD PINTER (Betrayal), British New Wave trailblazer KAREL REISZ (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) transforms Fowles's tale of scandalous romance into an arresting, hugely entertaining movie about cinema. In Pinter's reimagining, JEREMY IRONS (Dead Ringers) and MERYL STREEP (Sophie's Choice) star in parallel narratives, as a Victorian-era gentleman and the social outcast he risks everything to love, and as the contemporary actors cast in those roles and immersed in their own forbidden affair. The French Lieutenant's Woman, shot by the consummate cinematographer FREDDIE FRANCIS (Glory) and scored by the venerated composer and conductor CARL DAVIS, is a beguiling, intellectually nimble feat of filmmaking, starring a pair of legendary actors in early leading roles. Special Edition Features New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray New introduction by film scholar Ian Christie New interviews with actors Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, editor John Bloom, and composer Carl Davis Episode of The South Bank Show from 1981 featuring director Karel Reisz, novelist John Fowles, and screenwriter Harold Pinter Trailer PLUS: An essay by film scholar Lucy Bolton

• Midsomer Murders - Bad Tidings | DVD | (10/10/2005) from £13.85   |  Saving you £3.14 (22.67%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Nothing is as it seems behind the well-trimmed hedges of the picturesque cottages in the idyllic English county of Midsomer. Beneath the tranquil surface of sleepy village life exist dark secrets scandals and downright evil. John Nettles stars as the humorous thoughtful and methodical Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby.