"Actor: Fine Time Fontayne"

• Girls' Night | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £30.55   |  Saving you £-24.56 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Girls' Night of the title refers to Friday night, the one time of escape from the daily grind for longstanding best friends and factory co-workers, Dawn and Jackie. And Friday night means bingo. One evening their dream comes true when Dawn (the cautious, caring one) scoops £100,000, but the savage twist in the tale is that even before she gets the cheque she discovers she has an inoperable brain tumour. Cue Jackie (the spontaneous, irresponsible one) fulfilling Dawn's lifetime ambition with a holiday in Las Vegas ("Come on, we've got an hour to get the plane"). And from then on it's a buddy movie with inescapable resonances of Thelma and Louise, though the difference here is that the protagonists are two ordinary middle-aged women. Brenda Blethyn and Julie Walters are a magical pairing, with both giving mesmerising moving performances (honorary mention should also be made of Cody, the one sympathetic male character in the film, magnificently played by Kris Kristofferson). Though death is ever-present, this is by no means a depressing movie; rather the opposite, in fact, with a remarkably upbeat ending. If there's a message to be found here, it's that even the most apparently ordinary people can be extraordinary given the right circumstances. On the DVD: As well as the original trailer, there is on-location feature

• Hetty Wainthropp Investigates - Series 1 | DVD | (06/04/2009) from £13.89   |  Saving you £9.09 (83.39%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Mystery buffs will find Hetty Wainthropp to be delightful and uniquely entertaining company. Hetty has just turned 60, but she is not about to "ride serene into the evening tide," as her doting husband so poetically puts it. "I'm not 60 and I never will be," Hetty proclaims. "I'm not a senior citizen." Hetty wants to matter, so she gets a job at her local Lancashire post office. But that wouldn't make for much of a miniseries. Before you can say "cheeky monkey," she has involved herself in a deadly case of pension-fund fraud, and made a splash on the front pages as a "Super Gran Sleuth." The redoubtable Patricia Routledge, best known as Hyacinth Bucket on the beloved Keeping Up Appearances), does lovely work as Hetty, who first appeared in David Cook's 1986 novel, Missing Persons (Cook co-wrote the six first-season episodes contained here). Hetty is not as quaint as Miss Marple, nor her cases as seamy as Jane Tennison's Prime Suspect mysteries. She is a formidable character in her own right, opening her own private detective agency, and recruiting a 17-year-old shoplifter (Dominic Monaghan from the Lord of the Rings trilogy) to be her "devoted sidekick." A rogue cop, a roving arsonist, and other unsavory characters are no match for the woman who won't rest until things add up. As one police inspector grudgingly admits, "She's an extraordinary woman. She's no Miss Marple, but..." But, indeed. --Donald Liebenson

• Butterfly Kiss | DVD | (07/09/2009) from £5.38   |  Saving you £10.61 (197.21%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Butterfly Kiss