"Actor: Dan Rosen"

• 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

• Cheers - Series 4 | DVD | (18/07/2005) from £14.83   |  Saving you £20.16 (135.94%)   |  RRP £34.99

  For its fourth season, Cheers served up a new bartender. Following the death of Nicholas Colasanto, who had played Coach, the season premiere introduced Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson), the Indiana hick who certainly didn't raise the bar's collective IQ but had his own brand of endearing goofiness. That episode, "Birth, Death, Love and Rice", also explained what happened at the end of season 3 when Sam (Ted Danson) chased Diane (Shelley Long) and Frasier (Kesley Grammer) to Italy in hopes of preventing their marriage. The end result is that Diane returns to work at the bar and resumes her sexually charged flirtation with Sam, and Frasier becomes a brooding presence always looking for a way to win her back. Jennifer Tilly guest-stars as one of Sam's ex-girlfriends who actually hits it off with the petulant psychiatrist, but stealing the show in the same episode ("Second Time Around") was Dr. Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth), in what was supposed to be a five-minute one-shot role. The impossibly buttoned-up Sternin was such a perfect match for Frasier that she later became a regular cast member and won two Emmys. In other memorable episodes, Andy Andy (Derek McGrath) returns to terrorize Diane ("Diane's Nightmare"), the gang tries to turn the tables on Gary's Old Town Tavern in a bowling match ("From Beer to Eternity"), and Frasier sets up a night at the opera ("Diane Chambers Day"). In the three-part season finale ("Strange Bedfellows"), Sam begins dating a politician (Kate Mulgrew, later of Star Trek: Voyager) running for reelection. Diane decides to work for her opponent before taking a more drastic step, leading to Sam's memorable telephone call that served as a cliffhanger leading to season 5. Unlike previous seasons, the DVD set has no extras. --David Horiuchi

• 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

• Stranger Than Paradise | Blu Ray | (23/03/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Jim Jarmusch's black and white indie hit starring John Lurie. Willie (Lurie) is a New York hipster of Hungarian origin. When his relatives ask him to look after his 16-year-old cousin, Eva (Eszter Balint), he reluctantly agrees. Initially hostile to one another, it isn't long before the cousins develop an affectionate bond, but after ten days Eva leaves to stay with her Aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark). A year later Willie and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson) head off to Cleveland to visit the two women...

• Stranger Than Paradise | DVD | (23/03/2015) from £7.45   |  Saving you £9.80 (158.32%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Jim Jarmusch's black and white indie hit starring John Lurie. Willie (Lurie) is a New York hipster of Hungarian origin. When his relatives ask him to look after his 16-year-old cousin, Eva (Eszter Balint), he reluctantly agrees. Initially hostile to one another, it isn't long before the cousins develop an affectionate bond, but after ten days Eva leaves to stay with her Aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark). A year later Willie and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson) head off to Cleveland to visit the two women...

• The Last Supper | DVD | (24/02/2003) from £9.78   |  Saving you £3.21 (32.82%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Jet-black comedy surrounding a group of student liberals who invite controversial guests to weekly dinner parties succumbing to the temptation of murdering rightwing pundits with poisoned Merlot for their repulsive political beliefs in the belief that they're creating a better and safer world for everyone...

• Scourge Of The Worlds - A Dungeons And Dragons Adventure | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Scourge of Worlds: A Dungeons and Dragons Adventure is not a film sequel to Dungeons and Dragons (2000), but the DVD equivalent of an interactive role-playing novel. There are over 900 short digitally animated sequences, leading every so often to a choice to be made with the remote control, resulting after about 90 minutes in one of four possible endings. Just as the original D&D was inspired by The Lord of the Rings, the scenarios here are Tolkien rehashed: a newly arisen darkness is seeking an ancient ultimate weapon, against which stand a human warrior, Regdar, a halfling, Lidda and an elven wizard, Mialee. The CGI is closer to Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles than the pseudo-realism of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the electronic score is tiresome and the contemporary American voice acting, using such expressions as "head's up" and "…or something", is laughable. What of the interactive element? Essentially it offers two equally uninteresting paths at the end of every major scene--uninteresting because it's impossible to care what happens to the marionette-like stereotypes no matter what they do. While the adventure does offer plenty of well-choreographed cartoon-style action, interacting with Scourge of Worlds is ultimately about as much fun as watching someone else play a computer game--and that's just the first time through. On the DVD: Scourge of Worlds: A Dungeons and Dragons Adventure fills the DVD with the 900-plus animated sequences, presumably leaving no room for extras. The only options are between stereo sound and far more involving Dolby Digital 5.1. The image appears to have been taken directly from a digital master and is flawless, the images only limited by the TV-standard computer rendering. --Gary S Dalkin

• Under The Piano | DVD | (02/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

• Heart Of America | DVD | (05/12/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It's the last day of school and the unthinkable is about to happen. Distraught by constant bullying and verbal abuse from their peers two senior high school students plan to take weapons to school to murder the bullies that torment them then end their own lives in a horrific suicide pact... Based on the tragic events at Columbine High School.

• Stranger Than Paradise | DVD | (23/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Winner of the Camera d'Or for Best First Feature at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival Stranger Than Paradise not only launched Jim Jarmusch's career but also earned him recognition from critics as one of today's more inventive and creative filmmakers. Lounge Lizard musician John Lurie stars as Willie a disenchanted New Yorker who along with his best friend Eddie (Richard Edson) and cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) decides it's time to leave behind their boring lives in search of ""paradise."" But as their unforgettable road trip to Florida unfolds they find that amidst the sunshine blue skies and palm trees their pursuit of happiness is constantly road-blocked by the very thing they can't run away from... themselves.

• The Jim Jarmusch Collection Vol. 1 | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Permanent Vacation (1980): In downtown Manhattan Allie a twenty-something guy (Chris Parker) whose Father is not around and whose Mother is institutionalized is a big Charlie Parker fan. He almost subconsciously searches for more meaning in his life and meets a few strange and surreal characters along the way. Stranger Than Paradise (1984): Winner of the Camera d'Or for Best First Feature at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival Stranger Than Paradise not only launched Jim Jarmusch's career but also earned him recognition from critics as one of today's more inventive and creative filmmakers. Lounge Lizard musician John Lurie stars as Willie a disenchanted New Yorker who along with his best friend Eddie (Richard Edson) and cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) decides it's time to leave behind their boring lives in search of ""paradise."" But as their unforgettable road trip to Florida unfolds they find that amidst the sunshine blue skies and palm trees their pursuit of happiness is constantly road-blocked by the very thing they can't run away from... themselves. Down By Law (1986): In one of the hippest comedies ever made three misfits find themselves thrown together in a New Orleans jail cell. There's Zach the unemployed DJ Jack the small-time pimp and Bob the crazy Italian tourist. Unavailable for many years this cult hit stars Tom Waits John Lurie and the Oscar-winning director and star of Life is Beautiful Roberto Benigni. A film that firmly established Jim Jarmusch as the coolest director on the American independent scene.