The late Dennis Potter was a master at mining the popular songs of the 1930s and '40s for dramatic effect, but he never did it better than in The Singing Detective. The inestimable Michael Gambon plays a mystery writer named Philip E Marlow, who is suffering a torturous bout of psoriatic arthritis in hospital, where he is a victim of both his disease and the National Health Service. Unable to move without pain, he escapes into his imagination, plotting out a murder tale in which he is both a big-band singer and a private eye. But Potter and director Jon Amiel also mix in flashbacks of Marlow's youth and his unhappy marriage to explain how the real Marlow reached this sorry pass. Flawlessly, intricately, kaleidoscopically assembled, the six one-hour episodes fly by like some fantastic fever dream. Marshall Fine
Starring Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Days of Future Past, 12 Years a Slave) and Kodi Smith-McPhee (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), SLOW WEST follows the story of 16-year-old Jay Cavendish (Smit-McPhee) as he journeys across the American frontier at the end of the 19th century, in search of the woman he loves. Along the way he is joined by Silas (Fassbender), a mysterious traveller with his own agenda, and is hotly pursued by an outlaw named Payne (Mendelsohn). Directed by John Mclean, SLOW WEST also stars Ben Mendelsohn (Exodus: Gods and Kings), Caren Pistorius (The Light Between Oceans) and Rory McCann (Game of Thrones).
It’s New Year’s Eve at The Charelston, a run-down club in Liverpool owned by the local gangland boss. The new manager has arrives and soon discovers his out of favour predecessor has booked a band that can’t play, a magician with a dead rabbit and two parties of rowdy OAPs. On one coach arrives a devout catholic social club in fancy dress for a non-existent prize, among them a drunker blind ex-boxer, on the other an equally boisterous protestant revellers. When they get together mayhem ensues.
This mammoth box set features eight works of Dennis Potter spread over eleven discs. The Singing Detective:Slowly recovering from a terrible skin disease in a busy National Health hospital cynical thriller writer Phillip Marlow continues to unravel the traumas of his wartime boyhood while working through the plot of his greatest detective story - with himself as a crooning '40s detective on the trail of murderous Nazi plotters. But what is real and what is imagined? As childh
The Navy's elite SEAL (Sea Air and Land) squad is made up of the best of the best: supreme warriors who take on dangerous missions no other fighting force would dare attempt. Sent to rescue the crew of a US aircraft held hostage by Middle East terrorists the SEALs know that their skills will be put to the test. But when they discover that the terrorists have seized the plane's arsenal of deadly Stinger missiles they're thrust onto the frontlines of the battle of a lifetime...
They endured incarceration in hellish punishment camps even asylums for the insane. They were stigmatised and tortured in an attempt to break their spirit. And despite their courageous stance, they were shipped off from their native New Zealand to the front line of what is now judged by many to be the most terrible war in history. This powerful, moving and often brutal drama charts the true story of some of the men who refused to fight in World War I. It was a stance that tested their personal beliefs to the limit, but it also showed the human spirit at its most indomitable. Starring Fraser Brown (Harry, The Pretender).
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