"Actor: Paul Willson"

• Cheers - Season 3 | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £11.98   |  Saving you £25.00 (250.25%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Originally airing 20 years ago in 1984 this season sees Sam (Ted Danson) and Diane (Shelley Long) face the break-up of their explosive relationship - a predicament that brings the new character of Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammar) into the show's comedic mix. Along with the usual laughs provided by the antics of Carla (Rhea Perlman) Cliff (John Ratzenberger) and Norm (George Wendt) this series also says farewell to actor Nicholas ""Coach"" Colosanto whose untimely death occurred shor

• Office Space | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £8.72   |  Saving you £-2.73 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Peter Gibbons, thanks to a hypnotic suggestion, decides not to go to work at the same time his company is laying people off.

• Cheers - Season 2 | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £15.98   |  Saving you £21.00 (150.11%)   |  RRP £34.99

  It looks great: season two of the situation comedy many consider the best ever produced on American television has a superb presentation on this DVD collection. The colours are rich, the images sharp--a vast improvement over those murky reruns in perpetual TV syndication. Then, of course, there are the consistently brilliant episodes from Cheers' sophomore year. Despite its low-rated debut in 1982, the ensemble farce set in a Boston bar confidently returned with several strong story arcs, including the turbulent, screwball romance between intellectual poseur Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) and affable primitive Sam Malone (Ted Danson), romantic conflicts for the sexually voracious and deeply cynical barmaid Carla (Rhea Perlman) and marital separation for beloved barfly Norm (George Wendt). With John Ratzenberger signing on as a full-time cast member (playing pompous jive-slinger and postman Cliff Claven), and those opaque one-liners by the clueless Coach (Nicholas Colasanto), Cheers was firing on all cylinders. Episode highlights include "They Call Me Mayday", in which talk-show personality Dick Cavett, playing himself, convinces Sam the public would be interested in the former major league pitcher's autobiography--a notion that throws the unpublished, would-be novelist Diane into disbelief. Also wonderful is "Where There's a Will," guest-starring George Gaynes as a rich, dying man who leaves the gang $100,000 on a paper napkin will. "No Help Wanted" finds Sam's friendship with down-on-his-luck accountant Norm strained when the latter has a go at the bar's books, while the great "Coach Buries a Grudge" features the addled, elder statesman of Cheers delivering a memorable eulogy for a friend after discovering the dead man had an affair with his wife. Opinions vary about the worthiness of Cheers' latter years (the show ended in 1993), but no one disputes the merit of its ground-breaking start. --Tom Keogh

• Cheers: Series One | DVD | (24/11/2003) from £25.26   |  Saving you £9.73 (38.52%)   |  RRP £34.99

  The definition of comfort television is this: you want to go where you know everybody's name. And you're always glad you came. Cheers is open for business once again in this set that contains all 22 episodes of the first, and best, season of the show that inherited Taxi's mantle as television's best ensemble-driven workplace comedy. It can be instructive to return to a long-running series' more humble beginnings. While Cheers got drunk on farce in its later years, it began life as a much more grounded human comedy. In these inaugural episodes, the action does not stray from the Boston bar owned by Sam Malone, a washed-up baseball player three years sober. The straws that stir the drink are the supporting players: Nick Colasanto as addled Coach; Rhea Perlman, the Thelma Ritter of her generation, as surly and fertile waitress Carla; George Wendt as quintessential barfly Norm; and John Ratzenberger as Cliff, the bar know-it-all ready with "little-known facts" (and blessedly far from the pathetic blowhard his character would evolve into). Spiking this concoction is the palpable chemistry between Ted Danson's Sam and Shelley Long's Diane Chambers, fledgling waitress and self-described "student of life". The battle lines are drawn in the episode "Sam's Women": He's the "dim ex-baseball player" and she, "the post graduate". But, as Carla so indelicately puts it, they can't "put their glands on hold". In the first blush of lust, they were primetime's most potent mismatched couple until Moonlighting's David and Maddie bantered double entendres. Here are little remembered facts: Sam was initially "an astute judge of human character"; guest stars Fred Dryer ("Sam at Eleven") and Julia Duffy ("Any Friend of Diane's") were among those considered for the roles of Sam and Diane; and a pre-"Night Court" Harry Anderson stole his scenes in his recurring role as flim-flam man Harry ("Pick a Con...Any Con"). --Donald Liebenson

• It's Garry Shandling's Show - The Complete First Series | DVD | (22/03/2010) from £17.98   |  Saving you £22.01 (122.41%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Before the internet before reality TV what television series could be more humorous and with more vision than It's Garry Shandling's Show. In 1986 Garry Shandling was poised to become a permanent guest host on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. Instead he took a chance of an offer from fledgling network Showtime to create his own television series. The show was a surreal look at the daily life of a young single man who is a comedian. It's Garry Shandling's Show was not a typical sitcom. Shandling would break the 'fourth wall' to include the studio audience and the viewers at home in on the actual making of the show. Experimenting with the sitcom form meant inviting the audience onto the set playing with the passage of time (it's now two weeks later) and generally exploding the genre and making art of the debris. Teaming up with Saturday Night Lives Alan Zweibel Shandling 'put on a fourth grade play' every week for four seasons. With a crew of talented young writers including Tom Gammill. Max Pross Al Jean Michael Reiss and David Mirkin who would go onto to Seinfield and The Simpsons and Ed Solomon who wrote Men In Black television history was made. Over the years guest stars (playing themselves) included Tom Petty Rob Reiner Vanna White Red Buttons Dan Akroyd Martin Mull Gilda Radner (in her last TV performance) Carl Reiner Chevy Chase Jeff Goldblum Don Cornelius The Turtles and many more. From its unforgettable theme song to its closing credits It's Garry Shandling's Show was award winning mind bending television for 4 seasons and its influence is clearly seen in the best TV comedies through the decades to follow Enjoy all 16 episodes from the first of four seasons of this much loved classic now on DVD.

• Alex And Emma | DVD | (12/07/2004) from £5.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (133.56%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Faced both with an empty page and Cuban loan sharks out for his blood, an author with writer's block employs a stenographer to help write his novel, get paid by his publishers and save his skin.

• I Was A Teenage Vampire | DVD | (09/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  After Jeremy Capello is bitten by a beautiful and mysterious older woman his life begins to change dramatically as he realises he is becoming a vampire. What with the usual high school and teenage problems he soon realises that life isn't easy at seventeen...especially when you're a vampire.

• 976 Evil | DVD | (05/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A demonic stranglehold has befallen the sleepy little town of Garden City California. The evil is as pervasive and all-encompassing as the web of telephone lines hovering overhead the town's unsuspecting inhabitants. Young Spike a teen biker and James Dean wannabe takes a big loss in a poker game against a local gang The Barracudas. The gang gives him an ultimatum; deliver some quick cash or the ownership documents to his motorcycle his one prized possession. To take his mind off his problems Spike dials the telephone number 976-Evil he has discovered on a calling card where he is offered the demonic exhortations of none other than the devil himself. And Spike's nightmare is just beginning....