"Actor: Ann Pennington"

• Summer's Lease | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  John Gielgud (Gulliver's Travels) Annette Crosbie (Calendar Girls) and Susan Fleetwood (Persuasion) star in this intriguing drama series adapted by John Mortimer (Rumpole Of The Bailey) from his best selling novel. Molly Pargeter (Susan Fleetwood) has found the perfect Tuscan vvilla for her family's summer holiday. Molly had hoped to soak up the local colour and revel in the artistic masterpieces that surround her instead she ends up exploring the myster

• Elmo's Christmas Countdown / A Christmas Eve On Sesame Street Double Pack | DVD | (17/11/2008) from £6.55   |  Saving you £3.44 (34.40%)   |  RRP £9.99

  There''s a miracle on Sesame Street in this magical Christmas tale. Elmo Abby Cadabby and their new friend Stiller the Elf (voice of Ben Stiller) are going to count down to Christmas with the Christmas Counter-Downer. But all the counting boxes have gone missing and Christmas may never come again! Can Elmo and friends save Christmas? With the help of very special guests Sheryl Crow Jamie Foxx Anne Hathaway Jennifer Hudson Alicia Keys Brad Paisley Ty Pennington Steve Schirripa Tony Sirico and Kevin James (as Santa Claus) Elmo and friends will learn to believe in Christmas miracles.

• The One Game - The Complete Series | DVD | (28/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The 1988 Carlton mini-movie The One Game is the perfect definition of cult TV. Originally shown as four Saturday night instalments, it was a success with audiences and critics alike at the time and remains an extremely original piece of television. On the surface, the story is as simple: an ex-business partner exacts a very personal revenge. The game being played by Magnus (an almost unrecognisable Patrick Malahide) upon the arrogant Nick (Stephen Dillon) makes the tale far more interesting, however. If the premise sounds a little familiar, that's because the 1997 Michael Douglas movie The Game has striking similarities. The show captured society's interest in games at exactly the right time. First there's the Arthurian context, which visually struck a chord with a decade of Dungeons and Dragons fans. Then there's the constant reference to the new dawn of computer games, which everyone was excited about going into the 90s. But Nick is embroiled in a theory of Reality Gaming that turns everything on its head. He doesn't know who of his friends or colleagues may be in on the game, and since it begins with the sting of a £2 million theft, he's prepared to make sacrifices along the way. Changes in fashion and technology can't detract from what remains a cracking good yarn, well told and well played. On the DVD: The One Game arrives on disc superbly packaged. The attractive box contains an informative booklet relating the show's place in TV history. Unfortunately there's nothing at all in the way of extras on the disc itself--a disappointment, which, like the 4:3 ratio and stereo sound, is only to be expected for an all-but forgotten gem. --Paul Tonks

• Of Unknown Origin | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  A low-rent horror flick from the early 1980s, Of Unknown Origin completely misses the mark in the scare stakes and instead comes across like a grisly, live-action version of Tom and Jerry. Our inept hero is the ambitious, house-proud executive Bart Hughes (Peter Weller), who is left alone by his wife and son to complete a business proposal only to discover that he is sharing his apartment with a mischievous giant rat. Unable to trap or poison his foe, Hughes quickly descends into nightmare-haunted madness and thus the stage is set for a suspenseless battle of wits that is less cat-and-mouse and more idiot-versus-rat. Finding an angry rodent swimming in your toilet might be a pretty unpleasant prospect, but cinematically speaking it's far from terrifying. Created using jerky point-of-view shots and creature effects that range from incongruous real-life footage to button-eyed glove puppets, the rat is an unthreatening villain, despite Weller's best efforts to react in abject horror when he finds the corners of his mail nibbled or his dry groceries spoiled. There are some unsuccessful attempts to make Hughes' plight more immediate to the audience by references to real-life rat problems--he visits a library to research his enemy and finds some disturbing photographs of rat-attack victims and subsequently ruins a dinner party with a genuinely unsettling rant about infestation and plagues--but it's difficult to feel sorry for him when he can't even muster the tenacity to track down a professional exterminator. By the time Weller gets caught in one of his own traps, you will probably be rooting for the rat anyway, and might take some pleasure from a ridiculous denouement in which, dressed in full battle-gear, he completely destroys his beloved apartment by clumsily chasing the elusive vermin with a nail-studded baseball bat. Gore Verbinski's genuinely hilarious Mousehunt did it with a lot more charm. On the DVD: Of Unknown Origin comes to DVD with a basic selection of extras. An entertaining commentary from Peter Weller and the likeable George P Cosmatos III does the film a lot of favours, even if their efforts to talk up its importance as an allegory for man's struggle against nature using comparisons with The Old Man and the Sea, Moby Dick, Alien and Jaws fail to convince. Added to this is the theatrical trailer ("If it doesn't scare you to death, it WILL find another way!"), a choice of languages and scene selection. --Paul Philpott