"Actor: John Bird"

• The Complete Yes Minister & Yes, Prime Minister | DVD | (29/10/2012) from £44.94   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Brand New condition, Factory sealed. & disc set of "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister". -Box 1-

• The Lord of the Rings (Animated Version) | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is a bold, colourful, ambitious failure. Severely truncated, this two-hour version tackles only about half the story, climaxing with the battle of Helm's Deep and leaving poor Frodo and Sam still stuck on the borders of Mordor with Gollum. Allegedly, the director ran out of money and was unable to complete the project. As far as the film does go, however, it is a generally successful attempt at rendering Tolkien's landscapes of the imagination. Bakshi's animation uses a blend of conventional drawing and rotoscoped (traced) animated movements from live-action footage. The latter is at least in part a money-saving device, but it does succeed in lending some depth and a sense of otherworldly menace to the Black Riders and hordes of Orcs: Frodo's encounter at the ford of Rivendell, for example, is one of the movie's best scenes thanks to this mixture of animation techniques. Backdrops are detailed and well-conceived, and all the main characters are strongly drawn. Among a good cast, John Hurt (Aragorn) and C3PO himself, Anthony Daniels (Legolas), provide sterling voice characterisation, while Peter Woodthorpe gives what is surely the definitive Gollum (he revived his portrayal a couple of years later for BBC Radio's exhaustive 13-hour dramatisation). The film's other outstanding virtue is avant-garde composer Leonard Rosenman's magnificent score in which chaotic musical fragments gradually coalesce to produce the triumphant march theme that closes the picture. None of which makes up for the incompleteness of the movie, nor the severe abridging of the story actually filmed. Add to that some oddities--such as intermittently referring to Saruman as "Aruman"--and the final verdict must be that this is a brave yet ultimately unsatisfying work, noteworthy as the first attempt at transferring Tolkien to the big screen but one whose virtues are overshadowed by incompleteness. --Mark Walker

• Blow Up | DVD | (12/04/2004) from £4.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (180.36%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Michelangelo Antonioni's close-up of Swinging Sixties London. David Hemmings plays a master photographer who explores the city twenty-four hours a day focusing in on the world's most beautiful models. One day he takes some photographs of a couple embracing in a park and suspects he has stumbled across a murder. Antonioni received Academy Award nominations for Best Writer and Best Director in 1966 for this his first English Language film.

• Absolute Power: The Complete Series | DVD | (30/01/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Spin is dead, long live PR. Stephen Fry and John Bird star in this hilarious BBC satire set in the cynical world of public relations where truth is an optional extra and no job is too grubby, so long as it pays well... A re-working of Mark Tavener's acclaimed Radio 4 comedy series, Absolute Power sees Fry and Bird as Charles Prentiss and Martin McCabe spinmeisters supreme who run their own top London PR consultancy. Whether keeping celebrity clients in or out of the tabloids, saving MPs from political oblivion or sugar-coating unpopular government schemes, Prentiss approaches his campaigns with sophistry, cynicism and a withering sarcasm. Occasionally reined in by his older, world-wearier and less amoral partner, the Machiavelli of Prentiss McCabe presides over an office of youthful executives that include the bright but dangerously honest Alison and Jamie, an equally devious Prentiss-in-waiting. With punchy, sometimes controversial scripts and guest turns from Geoffrey Palmer, Rebecca Front, Tim Brooke-Taylor and John Sessions, this set comprises both acclaimed series.

• Jonathan Creek - Complete Series 1-4 Boxset | DVD | (29/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £74.99

  This box set contains all four series of Jonathan Creek to date. Alan Davies and Caroline Quentin star in this highly successful murder mystery drama series. Jonathan magic expert and amateur sleuth extraordinaire turns out to be less successful in his relationship with investigative crimewriter Maddy Magellen.... All the episodes from Series 1 and 2: 'The Wrestler's Tomb' 'Jack In The Box' 'The Reconstituted Corpse' 'No Trace of Tracey' and 'The House Of Monkeys'

• Jonathan Creek: Series 5 | DVD | (17/03/2014) from £9.24   |  Saving you £10.75 (116.34%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Jonathan Creek may have left his windmill and the world of professional magic behind but as he settles down for what ought to be a quiet married life there are still plenty of bizarre mysteries to tax his unique deductive powers. In the first of three new episodes as he and his beautiful wife Polly leave the city to move into her deceased parents' sprawling old house in the country the dust has barely settled when Creek is called upon to investigate a brutal and baffling murder attempt in a West End London theatre. The leading actress in a spooky Gothic musical has been found stabbed unconscious and left for dead in an empty dressing room from which no assailant could possibly have escaped. But just as challenging are a number of other ghostly events that begin to occur in the village where Creek and Polly have now made their home ... and which in the weeks to come will provide yet more classic puzzles for the lateral-thinking detective to unravel.

• Absolute Power - Series 1 | DVD | (18/07/2005) from £7.23   |  Saving you £12.76 (176.49%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Stephen Fry and John Bird star as spin doctors Charles Prentiss and Martin McCabe bringing the popular and satirical Radio 4 comedy Absolute Power to BBC 2. Written by media commentator Mark Lawson writers Andy Rattenbury (Teachers) and Guy Andrews (Chancer) Absolute Power casts a witty and acerbic eye on the machinations of PR gurus and does for the PR industry what Drop The Dead Donkey did for the newsroom. Stephen as Prentiss and John as McCabe are a

• Footballers' Wives - The Complete Series 3 | DVD | (25/04/2005) from £9.95   |  Saving you £15.04 (151.16%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Marriage, sex, drugs, fast cars and fights and loads and loads of affairs – these are all the ingredients that make this one of the DVD and TV highlights this April.

• Rosamunde Pilcher's Winter Solstice | DVD | (11/04/2005) from £10.69   |  Saving you £6.30 (58.93%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Winter Solstice is the entrancing story of shattered lives and broken hearts and a Christmas retreat which brings healing and happy endings.When recently bereaved Elfrida Phipps moves into a tiny cottage she soon makes friends with her new neighbours the Blundells.Elfrida's favourite niece Carrie returns from Austria heartbroken and briefly meets businessman Sam on her flight home.A tragic accident befalls the Blundells and with everyone's lives in ruins

• Educating Marmalade - The Complete Series | DVD | (19/08/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Meet Marmalade Atkins: The Naughtiest Girl in the World! Her wild behaviour has seen her expelled from virtually every school she's attended, and this fondly remembered kid's sitcom sees her causing further mayhem at a range of educational and correctional establishments. From Eton to the Convent of the Blessed Limit to Dartmoor, Marmalade remains impervious to discipline - to the constant despair of her parents, hapless social worker Mrs Allgood, and child psychologist Dr Glenfiddick... Sta...

• Joint Account | DVD | (05/09/2016) from £45.99   |  Saving you £-16.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  A successful businesswoman wants to give up work, but her house husband likes things the way they are Meet the Braithwaites. Belinda Braithwaite (Hannah Gordon) and David Braithwaite (Peter Egan) enjoy a very unconventional marriage. Belinda works full-time as an outspoken and respected bank manager. David is a stay-at-home-Dad, who takes care of the household, shares coffee mornings and innuendos with their flirty neighbor Louise (Lill Roughley) and volunteers at the Citizens Advice Bureau. Tired of the rat race, and with the kids now at university, Belinda wants to quit her exhausting job for a simpler life as a housewife. But David has other ideas. He doesn't relish the prospect of returning to a full-time job and does everything he can to persuade Belinda to continue wearing the trousers. John Bird stars as Belinda's deputy at the bank who firmly believes a woman's place is in the home. With an eye on the top job he'd love to see her go and makes office life as unpleasant as he can to try and edge her out. Will David find a ˜proper' job? Will Belinda quit the bank? Will Louise ever have her wicked way with David? Stars BAFTA winner Peter Egan (Chariots of Fire) and Hannah Gordon (Upstairs, Downstairs / My Wife Next Door) Directed by Mike Stephens (The Brittas Empire / ˜Allo ˜Allo) Written by Don Webb (Byker Grove)

• Alice In Wonderland | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Jonathan Miller's terrific adaptation of Lewis Carroll's novel originally aired on BBC1 in 1966 featuring an all star cast.

• A Very Peculiar Practice | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £39.99   |  Saving you £-15.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  A satirical, surreal and acutely observed comedy-drama from the mid-1980s, A Very Peculiar Practice stars Peter Davison, who, following turns as a vet in All Creatures Great and Small and the Doctor in Doctor Who, here plays naïve Dr Stephen Daker, a profoundly nervous new addition to Lowlands University's medical practice. The distinctly eclectic team he meets is headed by the compassionate, incompetent, alcoholic and suicidal "Jock" McCannon (the gloriously theatrical Graham Crowden). Barbara Flynn is marvellous as the manipulative bisexual Dr Rose Marie, and David Troughton as Dr Bob Buzzard personifies the "greed-is-good" ethos of the era. The seven 50-minute episodes here form an overall arc following Daker from sheer terror through romance with behavioural psychologist Lyn Turtle (Amanda Hillwood), to ethical conflict with the sociopathic vice-chancellor (played with relish by John Bird). Increasingly surreal (from strange nuns to stranger dream sequences--the second, even better series was more bizarre still), the series launches an acidic assault on the Thatcherite asset-stripping mentality that was then laying waste not just British universities, but the entire nation. Written with an acute irony by Andrew Davies, whose move into more mainstream adaptations such as Pride and Prejudice (1995) was contemporary TV drama's greatest loss, A Very Peculiar Practice is a television landmark that, alongside The Singing Detective and Edge of Darkness, marks 1986 as one of the finest years in the history of the medium. --Gary S Dalkin

• Dennis Potter - Blue Remembered Hills | DVD | (26/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Dennis Potter's play is set in the Forest of Dean on a summer day in 1943. Seven children go out to play. The seven children are all played by adult actors to act as 'A magnifying glass to show what it's like to be a child'.

• Take a Girl Like You (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (29/05/2023) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Jonathan Miller's film of Kingsley Amis' comic novel (adapted for the screen by George Melly), casts Hayley Mills (Whistle Down the Wind, Twisted Nerve) as a naïve young girl who moves from the North of England to teach in a London school and finds herself fending off the advances of a number of lusty suitors, including Oliver Reed, John Bird and Noel Harrison. As much a document of its time as a satire on the sexual mores (and confusions) of the period, Miller's still remarkably fresh debut feature is buoyed by its terrific cast and a typically excellent Stanley Myers score. Product Features High Definition remaster Original mono audio A New Era Revisited (2019, 15 mins): in-depth interview with celebrated actor Hayley Mills Now and Then: Jonathan Miller (1967, 42 mins): archival interview featuring the polymath director in conversation with broadcaster Bernard Braden Make a Film Like You (2019, 8 mins): production manager Denis Johnson Jnr and assistant director Joe Marks recalls the making of Take a Girl Like You Isolated music & effects track Original theatrical trailers Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Inspector Morse - Series 4 | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £16.22   |  Saving you £8.77 (54.07%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This box set features the entire fourth series of the classic British Television drama Inspector Morse. Episodes comprise: 1. Infernal Serpent: Morse investigates the death of an environmentalist killed only minutes before he was due to give a highly controversial lecture... 2. The Sins Of The Fathers: Morse and Lewis are called in to investigate the mystery of an unwelcome takeover bid of a family-run real ale brewery and the death of the current managing d

• King Lear | DVD | (23/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  First screened in 1982 this timeless story of an ageing king who decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters stars Michael Hordern as Lear with Brenda Blethyn as Cordelia Giliam Barge as Goneril Penelope Wilton as Regan Michael Kitchen as Edmund and Anton Lesser as Edgar....

• Danger - Marmalade at Work - The Complete Series | DVD | (19/08/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The hugely successful sequel to Educating Marmalade, Danger - Marmalade at Work charts the ongoing misdeeds and misadventures of 'the worst girl in the world' as she's launched into a series of work-experience placements. From showbiz at the New York School for Show-Offs and Big-Heads to the Secret Service, from cookery at Heartburn Hall to a stint on The Grotty Shark under Captain Blight, there isn't a profession that remains safe from the social menace that is Marmalade Atkins! Charlotte C...

• The Breaking Of Bumbo | DVD | (23/09/2013) from £8.55   |  Saving you £1.44 (16.84%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Richard Warwick and Joanna Lumley star in this sexy, exuberant comedy charting the travails of a young guardsman learning to become an officer. Adapting his bestselling novel, The Breaking of Bumbo draws on the youthful experiences of director Andrew Sinclair: it is a time-capsule portrait of military rigour competing with the era's burgeoning sexual and social freedoms, set against a picture-postcard backdrop of Swinging-Sixties London. The Breaking of Bumbo is presented uncut in a brand-new...

• The Lord of the Rings (1978) | Blu Ray | (10/12/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Made in 1978, the original 'The Lord Of The Rings' was directed by cutting edge animator Ralph Bakshi using an innovative technique that allowed the animator to paint over live action footage, bringing the book to life with stunning success. Featuring an exceptional voice cast including William Squire as Gandalf the Grey, Christopher Guard as the Hobbit Frodo and guardian of the master ring, John Hurt as the heroic Strider, One Foot in the Grave's Annette Crosby as Galadriel and Star Wars' A...