"Director: Ellen S. Pressman"

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Season 2 | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  The complete second season of vampire slayer Buffy. Episodes comprise: 1. When She Was Bad 2. Some Assembly Required 3. School Hard 4. Inca Mummy Girl 5. Reptile Boy 6. Halloween 7. Lie To Me 8. The Dark Age 9. What's My Line? (Part 1) 10. What's My Line? (Part 2) 11. Ted 12. Bad Eggs 13. Surprise 14. Innocence 15. Phases 16. Bewitched Bothered And Bewildered 17. Passion 18. Killed By Death 19. I Only Have Eyes For You 20. Go Fish 21. Becoming (Part 1) 22. Becoming (Part 2)

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Complete Season 1 | DVD | (18/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Vampire-slayer Buffy Summers moves to Sunnydale, a Californian community located above the "Hellmouth", a phenomenon which explains the local graveyard's overpopulation of vampires and other supernatural beings. Angel, a mysterious loiterer, starts flirting with Buffy and gives her helpful tips on how to cope with the local nasties. However, he turns out to be a vampire, which complicates the future of their relationship. Buffy makes friends with school outcasts Willow, a computer nerd, and geeky Xander. But she excites the enmity of high-school princess Cordelia. The season's prime villain is the Master, a Nosferatu-looking vampire lurking under the town. Giles, Buffy's mentor, looks things up in books and demonstrates the exact same look of puzzlement actor Anthony Head used to demonstrate in those horrifying instant coffee ads. --Kim Newman

• Buffy Season 2 | DVD | (18/09/2017) from £11.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  At the heart of the first years of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the romance between Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), slayer of all things evil, and hunky Angel (David Boreanaz), the tortured vampire destined to walk the earth with a soul. The second season of Buffy took the Buffy-Angel pas de deux from ecstasy to agony in a now-classic plot arc that catapulted the show from WB teen drama to true TV greatness. You see, if the cursed Angel ever experiences true happiness for a moment, he'll revert to being an evil vampire again. And guess what happens after Buffy and Angel finally declare their love for one another and consummate their relationship... Buffy found its true momentum during the second season, as geeky Xander (Nicholas Brendon) fell in love with popular girl Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), Willow (Alyson Hannigan) gave up her crush on Xander in favour of werewolf boy Oz (Seth Green), and watcher Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) began a sweetly tentative relationship with computer teacher (and witch) Jenny Calendar (Robia LaMorte). Mayhem came to Sunnydale, though, in the form of evil vampires Drusilla (Juliet Landau) and Spike (drolly wicked James Marsters), who were more than ready to aid and abet Angel as he turned bad. It all sounds like horror-action mayhem (and there are great fight scenes), but Buffy took on its plotlines with amazing depth, intelligence, and humour. And oh, man, the love story! Buffy and Angel's tragic relationship is one of the most heartbreaking you'll ever find. Buffy's final dilemma finds her having to save the world at Angel's expense, and Gellar (who deserves a passel of Emmys for her work) is phenomenal at telegraphing Buffy's swirling conflicts between love and duty. This is some of the best TV ever made, period. --Mark Englehart

• Charmed - Season 1 | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Charmed: The Complete First Season recaptures a period when television's WB network was particularly keen on series about the supernatural and specially powered characters. The original home of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and future launch pad for Angel and Smallville, the WB debuted Charmed in 1998 with many of the same intriguing ironies that made those other shows click. Specifically, the greater a character's powers, the more vulnerable he or she becomes; the more superhuman, the more painfully obvious one's lonely, fragile humanity. The Halliwells, a trio of witch heroines and siblings at the center of Charmed, is a case in point. Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) returns to her San Francisco family home after losing her job, and moves in with her older sisters Prue (Shannen Doherty) and Piper (Holly Marie Combs). On her first night back, Phoebe finds the Book of Shadows in the attic and recites a spell giving all three women unique powers they were always meant to have: Prue suddenly has the gift of telekinesis, Piper can make time stand still, and Phoebe can see into the future. All well and good, but along with those extraordinary abilities is a new awareness of dark forces in the world from which mortals need protection. In some cases, those forces have been plotting a long time to steal the Halliwell's magical legacy once they awakened to it--and now they will never let up. Evil warlocks, demons, ancient curses, Grimlocks, and Wendigos (the last two are best left explained by their respective episodes), however, are only half the battle on this sexy dramedy, in which more ordinary matters of emotional and real-world survival also preoccupy the Halliwells. An important ally, Inspector Andy Trudeau (Ted King), is Prue's ex-lover, a delicate detail that mixes pain with duty as the couple rekindles their troubled relationship while solving otherworldly crimes. In "Dead Man Dating," Piper falls for the ghost of a murdered man who needs help, and later competes with Phoebe for the attention of a handyman, Leo (Brian Krause). Jobs and money are always an issue, too. At one time or another, Phoebe works as a psychic, Piper as a caterer, and Prue finds a job at an auction house. As with Buffy, the engine of Charmed is the seamless, sometimes-comic, sometimes-tender way in which all these dynamics in the magic and non-magic worlds blend together, presenting young adult challenges that are both unique and somehow terribly familiar. It is particularly fun to watch this series grow, deepen, and experiment during its first year. The season's true highlight is probably "That 70s Episode," in which the Halliwells go back in time to meet their younger selves. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Party Of Five - Season 1 | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  After the sudden loss of their parents the Salingers must band together to keep their own lives on track discovering first loves last calls and themselves along the rocky road to growing up. Headlined by a young sexy cast including Neve Campbell Scott Wolf and Lacey Chabert this highly-rated long-running series (1994-2000) firmly found its place as a pop culture phenomenon for all ages. Shot through with equal doses heartache and laughter Party Of Five remains an emotional knockout delivering all 22 episodes of this Golden Globe winning (Best TV Series Drama 1996) series' breakthrough debut season proving again that home is where the heart is. Episodes comprise: 1. Pilot 2. Homework 3. Good Sports 4. Worth Waiting For 5. All's Fair 6. Fathers And Sons 7. Much Ado 8. Kiss Me Kate 9. Something Out Of Nothing 10. Thanksgiving 11. Private Lives 12. Games People Play 13. Grownups 14. Not Fade Away 15. It's Not Easy Being Green 16. Aftershocks 17. In Loco Parentis 18. Who Cares? 19. Brother's Keeper 20. The Trouble With Charlie 21. All-Nighters 22. The Ides Of March