"Actor: Leonard Rossiter"

• The Galton And Simpson Playhouse - The Complete Series | DVD | (19/01/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The Galton And Simpson Playhouse: The Complete Series

• 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

• The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin - The Complete Third Series | DVD | (19/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Boasting a virtuoso comic performance from Leonard Rossiter The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-79) remains one of the greatest of all television sitcoms. Writer David Nobbs combined the surrealist absurdity of Monty Python with an on-going story line that unfolded through each of the three seasons with a clear beginning, middle and end; a ground-breaking development in 70s TV comedy. The first and best season charts middle-aged, middle-management executive Reginald Perrin as he breaks-down under the stress of middle-class life until he informs the world that half the parking meters in London have Dutch Parking Meter Disease. He fakes suicide and returns to court his wife Elizabeth (Pauline Yates) in disguise, a plot development that formed the entire basis of Mrs Doubtfire (1993). Series Two is broader, the rapid-fire dialogue still razor sharp and loaded with caustic wit and ingenious silliness, as a now sane Reggie takes on the madness of the business world by opening a chain of shops selling rubbish. The third season, set in a health farm, is routine, the edge blunted by routine sitcom conventions. At its best The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is hilarious and moving, its depiction of English middle-class life spot on, its satire prophetic. Reggie's visual fantasies hark back to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and Billy Liar (1963), and look forward to Ally McBeal (1997-2002) and are the icing on the cake of a fine, original and highly imaginative show. On the DVD: Reginald Perrin's discs contain one complete seven episode season. There are no extras. The sound is good mono and the 4:3 picture is generally fine, though some of the exterior shot-on-film scenes have deteriorated and there are occasional signs of minor damage to the original video masters. Even so, for a 1970s sitcom shot on video the picture is excellent and far superior to the original broadcasts. --Gary S Dalkin

• If There Weren't Any Blacks You'd Have To Invent Them | DVD | (19/04/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  A thought provoking drama about racism.

• The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin - The Complete Collection | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £32.95   |  Saving you £7.04 (21.37%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Follow the trials and tribulations of one of TV comedy's greatest creations in this complete collection of all three series. All the episodes over 10 hours of classic comedy. From his days at Sunshine Desserts with boss C.J. through the rise and fall of his Grot empire where everything sold was guaranteed completely useless to the creation of a commune that saw him reunited with all his old workmates (including C.J.) this is the complete 22 episode story of Reginald Iolanthe Per

• 2001: A Space Odyssey | DVD | (03/03/2008) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-4.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Mankind finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, artifact buried on the moon and, with the intelligent computer HAL, sets off on a quest.

• King Rat | DVD | (08/08/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  They made him the toughest among them..... The Japanese prisoner of war camp Changi in Singapore which houses Allied prisoners of war is a living hell. The great mass of prisoners that are living at sub-human subsistence level. US Army Corporal King has been living up to his surname through his control of the camp's black market and by scamming the officers and other POWs. Nominated for 2 Academy Awards.

• The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin - The Complete Second Series | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £9.23   |  Saving you £6.76 (73.24%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Boasting a virtuoso comic performance from Leonard Rossiter The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-79) remains one of the greatest of all television sitcoms. Writer David Nobbs combined the surrealist absurdity of Monty Python with an on-going story line that unfolded through each of the three seasons with a clear beginning, middle and end; a ground-breaking development in 70s TV comedy. The first and best season charts middle-aged, middle-management executive Reginald Perrin as he breaks-down under the stress of middle-class life until he informs the world that half the parking meters in London have Dutch Parking Meter Disease. He fakes suicide and returns to court his wife Elizabeth (Pauline Yates) in disguise, a plot development that formed the entire basis of Mrs Doubtfire (1993). Series Two is broader, the rapid-fire dialogue still razor sharp and loaded with caustic wit and ingenious silliness, as a now sane Reggie takes on the madness of the business world by opening a chain of shops selling rubbish. The third season, set in a health farm, is routine, the edge blunted by routine sitcom conventions. At its best The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is hilarious and moving, its depiction of English middle-class life spot on, its satire prophetic. Reggie's visual fantasies hark back to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and Billy Liar (1963), and look forward to Ally McBeal (1997-2002) and are the icing on the cake of a fine, original and highly imaginative show. On the DVD: Reginald Perrin's discs contain one complete seven episode season. There are no extras. The sound is good mono and the 4:3 picture is generally fine, though some of the exterior shot-on-film scenes have deteriorated and there are occasional signs of minor damage to the original video masters. Even so, for a 1970s sitcom shot on video the picture is excellent and far superior to the original broadcasts. --Gary S Dalkin

• Machinegunner | DVD | (01/07/2013) from £17.53   |  Saving you £-4.54 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Leonard Rossiter stars as Cyril Dugdale, a Bristol-based 'machinegunner' (West Country slang for a debt collector) and amateur detective who fi nds himself enmeshed in a dangerous web of corruption in this dark yet humorous HTV thriller. Lured by the promise of easy money, Dugdale takes compromising photographs of Jack Bone, a property dealer involved in an adulterous affair, for the mysterious Felicity Mae Ingram; Felicity's attractiveness also has more than a little to do with Dugdale's eager co-operation, but he has little understanding of what he is stepping into. When Bone's hired thugs are dispatched to retrieve the negatives, and then Bone himself is found dead in woodland, Dugdale realises he been drawn into a conspiracy involving a widespread extortion racket. Leonard Rossiter's sublime talent for portraying seedy, unscrupulous but comically engaging characters is used to marvellous effect in a production that also stars Nina Baden-Semper (Love Thy Neighbour), multi-award-winning writer and actor Colin Welland, Kate O'Mara (Dynasty), and Timothy Preece (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin). Originally screened in 1976, Machinegunner was written by Dave Martin (Doctor Who) and BAFTA winner Bob Baker, and directed by Patrick Dromgoole (Robin of Sherwood).

• Tripper's Day - The Complete Series | DVD | (20/09/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Norman Tripper (Leonard Rossiter) a Northern manager assigned to a London supermarket with a problematic staff.

• Deadfall | Blu Ray | (05/02/2018) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Michael Caine stars as a cat burglar in this 1960s suspense thriller directed by Bryan Forbes. When jewel thieves Richard and Fe Moreau (Eric Portman and Giovanna Ralli) invite former alcoholic cat burglar Henry Clarke (Caine) to join their ranks for a daring robbery, things quickly become complicated. Finding himself increasingly attracted to Fe, Henry soon realises that the couple's relationship is far from what it seems, a fact that has a bearing on events when the trio decide to relieve Spanish playboy Salinas (David Buck) of his jewels. Extras: High Definition Transfer Interview with Chris Poggiali 28 Booklet by Michael Caine Expert Christopher Bray Still Gallery Theatrical Trailer

• Steptoe And Son - Series 8 | DVD | (14/05/2007) from £9.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (30.03%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The eighth and final series of Steptoe and Son. Episodes Comprise: 1. Back in Fashion 2. Porn Yesterday 3. And So to Bed 4. The Seven Steptoerai 5. Upstairs Downstairs Upstairs Downstairs 6. Seance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard

• Water | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  England wants the Island dumped.France wants it bombed America wants it wholesale And Michael Caine wants it.... on the rocks!

• Legends Of British Comedy � The Very Best Of Leonard Rossiter | DVD | (24/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  This is the ultimate film review of a true great of British comedy. Featuring extensive extracts from the finest comedy moments from the late great and sadly missed Leonard Rossiter including unforgettable highlights from Le Petomane Rising Damp Billy Liar The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and The Losers. There's also a chance to revisit the full range Leonard Rossiter's iconic series of commercials for 'Cinzano' with Joan Collins. In addition to archive interviews with Leonard himself we also hear the first hand reflections of John Barron (CJ from The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin) Sue Nicholls (Joan from The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin) Tim Preece (Tom from The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin) Bruce Bold (David Harris-Jones from The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin) Don Warrington (Richard from Rising Damp) and Eric Chappel; writer of Rising Damp.

• Luther | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £11.30   |  Saving you £8.69 (43.50%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An adaptation of John Osborne's play based on the Augustinian Monk Martin Luther and his pivotal role in the political social economic and religious revolt against the medieval Catholic Church.

• Steptoe And Son - Series 3 | DVD | (13/02/2006) from £9.28   |  Saving you £6.70 (106.52%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett return as Albert and Harold Steptoe the bickering 'rag-and-bone' junkmen in another installment of the classic comedy series Steptoe And Son. Episodes Comprise: 1. Homes Fit For Heroes 2. The Wooden Overcoats 3. The Lead Man Cometh 4. Steptoe a la Cart 5. Sunday For Seven Days 6. The Bonds That Bind Us 7. The Lodger

• The Losers - The Complete Series | DVD | (21/01/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Riding high on his success as both Rising Damp’s seedy landlord Rigsby and frustrated middle-manager and fantasist Reggie Perrin Leonard Rossiter slipped further down the social ladder to portray a low-rent manipulative wrestling manager determined to make a quick buck. Penned by celebrated journalist writer and satirist Alan Coren this hilariously wry sitcom is directed by Joe McGrath and also stars Alfred Molina – in his first television role – as the champion non-champion.

• Rising Damp - The Best Of | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £5.82   |  Saving you £4.17 (71.65%)   |  RRP £9.99

  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