"Director: Douglas Argent"

• The Best Of Steptoe And Son | DVD | (01/10/2001) from £4.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (160.32%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Very Best of Steptoe and Son is wonderful collection of "Steptoe" moments...but not entirely what it claims to be. This selection, is in fact a collection of five episodes from the two surviving series of the four shot in colour in the 1970s--the four black and white series shot in the 1960s are neglected entirely. However by the 1970s, Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett had been playing Albert and Harold Steptoe for almost a decade and the parts of the greedy needy old man and his witty feeble son were second nature to them. One of the best episodes on show here is "The Desperate Hours", which sets the father and son duo off against a similar couple--Leonard Rossiter's escaped bank robber and the old lag who taught him everything he knows--both couples come to understand the shared dynamic of their relationships. The 1970s episodes included more external shots and opened the show out from its original two-hander format--"Oh What a Beautiful Mourning", for example, introduces us to a large selection of the Steptoe clan, played by a variety of well known character actors. On the DVD: The DVD is presented in a standard television 4:3 aspect ratio and adds the luxury of Dolby Sound to the show's original mono; the Ron Grainger signature tune has never sounded so good. There are no subtitles, but the DVD includes a short account of the two stars' careers and an extended interview in which Galton and Simpson, the scriptwriters, talk about the history of the show from its origin as a one-off Comedy Playhouse episode through to the eventual decision that after the eighth series it was time to call it a day. --Roz Kaveny

• Astronauts - The Complete Series | DVD | (09/07/2012) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Two men, one woman and a dog are cooped up together in darkest space. Occupying a two-room 'sky-lab' on Britain's first manned space mission, they are under constant surveillance as they orbit the Earth - even on their visits to the lavatory. Tensions simmer, resentment builds and relationships become strained... and it's not long before they're ganging up on their earthbound American contact at Mission Control.Written by Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, this hilarious comedy was inspired by and based upon actual conflicts documented by the astronauts of the NASA Skylab programme. Christopher Godwin is Mission Commander Malcolm Mattocks, Barrie Rutter is his truculent partner David Ackroyd, and Carmen du Sautoy is no-nonsense Science Officer Gentian Foster; Bruce Boa stars as their much-abused mission controller, Beadle.Astronauts was produced by Tony Charles and Douglas Argent (whose combined credits include Fawlty Towers and The New Statesman), with Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais acting as script editors. This set contains both series, first aired between 1981 and 1983.

• That Beryl Marston...! - The Complete Series | DVD | (20/04/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The Classic TV Sitcom Series

• Steptoe And Son - The Very Best Of Steptoe And Son - Vol. 2 | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £7.52   |  Saving you £5.47 (72.74%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The second volume of The Very Best of Steptoe and Son contains five excellent episodes from the classic sitcom scripted by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who created Steptoe when Tony Hancock dispensed with their services in the early 1960s. The story of the acerbic but hopelessly pretentious Harold, would-be man about town longing in vain to escape from his rag-and-bone yard existence and his "dirty old man" of a father, is one of Britain's greatest sitcoms. Its underlying sadness somehow makes it all the funnier. "The Bath" is in black and white and features a wonderfully disgusting sequence of old man Albert retrieving pickled onions from his bathwater and putting them back in the jar. The other four episodes are from the 1970s and in colour: "Séance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard" features a young Patricia Routledge as a bogus medium. "Porn Yesterday" has Harold outraged to discover that the young Albert once starred in a "What the Butler Saw" feature. "And So to Bed" has Harold buying a waterbed to impress a new "bird" and having his romantic hopes literally punctured by his old man. The wonderful "Upstairs Downstairs, Upstairs, Downstairs" has the put-upon Harold getting the better of his dad for once when he discovers that the "perpendicular ponce" is feigning a back injury to keep Harold at his beck and call and plans an excruciating revenge--a bed bath. There's only one shortcoming: completists would prefer these old episodes to be issued chronologically and in full rather than in selective "Best of" compilations. On the DVD: The Very Best of Steptoe and Son episodes are presented in the format in which they were originally shown and all hold up well without any great efforts at enhancement. There are no extras. --David Stubbs

• It Takes a Worried Man - The Complete Series 3 | DVD | (14/10/2013) from £6.79   |  Saving you £6.20 (91.31%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Co-written by and starring Peter Tilbury, the BAFTA-nominated creator of Shelley, It Takes a Worried Man hilariously charts the burgeoning mid-life crisis of Philip Roath - a divorced thirty-something insurance salesman whose confidence is diminishing as rapidly as his hair and teeth. This third and final series sees Roath's relationship with girlfriend Liz taking an increasingly rocky path, and his despondency deepens as the prospect of redundancy rears its ugly head. While his boss - aka T...

• The Liver Birds - Series 2 | DVD | (17/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Beryl (Polly James) and Sandra (Nerys Hughes) are two lively friends sharing a bedsit in Liverpool. Their place is in Huskisson Street where all the action happens. Beryl's the spontaneous and scatty one whereas Sandra is quieter more cautious and refined. What they have in common is romance finance and family trouble which keeps them occupied when they're not checking out the latest fashions. First broadcast in 1971 this release features every episode from Series Two of Carla Lane's The Liver Birds.

• The Cuckoo Waltz - The Complete Fourth Series | DVD | (22/08/2011) from £8.98   |  Saving you £6.00 (85.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  David Roper and Diane Keen return in this hit Granada sitcom which follows the fortunes of local news reporter Chris Hawthorne and his wife Fliss. The young couple have always enjoyed life's more modest pleasures but face an uphill struggle to make ends meet on Chris's meagre salary especially now the twins have reached school age and lodger Gavin Rumsey has left. Enter suave new lodger Adrian Lockett; Fliss and Chris have just lost a life-long friend and gained a total stranger!

• Meeting A Bullet | DVD | (31/01/2005) from £5.18   |  Saving you £7.81 (60.10%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Their mistake was leaving him alive... A dirty cop accuses a young guy of being involved in a string of mob-related murders from Miami to Los Angeles. Meanwhile the kid is weaving his way through mob drive-bys car thefts and petty crimes in L.A.