"Actor: Matt Bardock"

• The Coroner - Series 1 | DVD | (29/02/2016) from £11.99   |  Saving you £18.00 (150.13%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Crime investigations against a stunning seaside backdrop are at the heart of this entertaining new drama series following a high-flying solicitor who returns to live and work in the small town she escaped as a teenager. As coroner, Jane Kennedy's job is to investigate sudden or unexplained deaths in this beautiful English coastal community. With a new and intriguing case to investigate in each episode, starting with the discovery of a body, Jane finds herself having to work with old flame Davey Higgins, who is now the local detective sergeant. The Coroner combines mystery and potential danger with the warm, light-hearted tone of Jane's relationships with her colleagues, family and the local community. While Jane is talented and tenacious in seeking justice for the dead, her personal life is a bit more haphazard!

• This Year's Love | DVD | (28/02/2000) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An unpretentious Brit-flick distinguished by a great cast, This Year's Love is writer-director David Kane's wry, funny study of six singletons in search of something--possibly love, possibly just sex--that will help them make sense of an untidy world. Aside from the acting, the film's strongest feature is its unflinching realism. The setting is North London's Camden Lock, an area that is in equal parts ultra-trendy and horrendously squalid. The characters reflect the locale: a circle of youthful drop-outs, wannabes and never-have-beens united in their common desire to surmount loneliness and find that elusive "perfect match". The central figures are newlyweds Danny and Hannah (the wonderful Douglas Henshall and Catherine McCormack) and the film in essence concerns itself with the fallout from the spectacular and rapid disintegration of their marriage. Danny first hooks up with cleaner-cum-nightclub singer Mary (a marvellously self-deprecating Kathy Burke), while Hannah finds lecherous womaniser Cameron (an unwashed Dougray Scott). Cameron's flatmate Liam (Ian Hart) fails to impress posh single mum Sophie (Jennifer Ehle in dreadlocks), who goes on to reject Danny and Cameron in turn, while Liam becomes dangerously obsessed by Hannah then Mary. So the merry-go-round of relationship swapping, unlikely coincidences and bittersweet life-lessons turns full circle. David Kane's comic dialogue is witheringly sharp, the situations (aside from all the coincidental meetings) are well-observed and the characters sympathetically three-dimensional (helped in no small part by the quality of the ensemble cast). The frequently hilarious comedy is tempered by an underlying despair: if it's not exactly Brassed Off or The Full Monty for neurotic, self-obsessed metropolitans, it's a film that's at least happy to exist in the same genre and achieves the same poignant empathy with its characters. The soundtrack is great, too. Imagine that the cast of Trainspotting gate-crashed Four Weddings and a Funeral and the result would be This Year's Love. On the DVD: Short on-set interviews with the principals and a promotional featurette are supplemented by a sequence of unedited behind-the-scenes footage. The film itself is presented in a good-looking anamorphic (16:9) print. --Mark Walker

• No Angels - Series 3 | DVD | (17/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The NHS bad girls are back! Every day the girls face life death and lunacy on the wards of St. Margaret's; every night they let off steam with a dangerous appetite for uncomplicated sex and unruly misbehaviour... The complete third series of No Angels!

• The Coroner (Complete Series) - 6-DVD Set | DVD | (05/02/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Lakes | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Lakes brought writer Jimmy McGovern and actor John Simm a great deal of critical praise in 1997. Following a particularly dry period for British TV drama, the show's realistic characterisations and their painfully honest decisions hit audiences hard. Simm is a twentysomething trapped in a life of compulsive gambling, theft and being on the dole in Liverpool. On a whim he heads north to the Lake District. He expects to find the countryside quietude where his hidden poetical leanings might find a home, but instead gets caught up in a community like any other. Lies, temptation and tragedy beset every household just as much as the big city. The focus of Series 1 is Danny's relationship with Emma (Emma Cunniffe) and the consequences of having a child. As time races by, his link to the Lakes becomes an exercise in torment when the eyes of blame fall easily upon him after the accidental deaths of four schoolgirls. Stoking the flames of a series of secondary explosions in waiting are a pair of affairs, one adulterous, the other complicated by religion. On the DVD: The Lakes Series 1 comes with two separate commentary tracks for the very first episode. In interviews, John Simm fondly recalls how cold the lake water was and director David Blair recalls putting him in it. It's a shame the two weren't recorded together. It's also a shame that's all there is in this package. Even a few cast biographies would have been welcome. Picture is 4:3 and stereo sound is as you'd expect from 1990s UK TV. --Paul Tonks

• Dirty Tricks | DVD | (19/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  'Dirty Tricks' follows the hapless exploits of an unscrupulous English tutor at a seedy language school in Oxford. On the surface he is an eternal student: charming witty and accomplished. Beneath the facade however he displays a brilliant and ruthless talent for lying and manipulating everyone around him. Our 'hero' becomes friendly with wealthy couple Dennis and Karen Parsons but his initial feelings of bitterness regarding their success become complicated by a frenzied affair wit

• Bollywood Queen | DVD | (22/03/2004) from £8.57   |  Saving you £7.42 (86.58%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A young Asian girl gets caught up in a Romeo and juliet style romance as she falls in love with a west-country lad. While disapproving families on both sides make life difficult the East meets the East End as Bollywood comes to London.