"Actor: Julian Somers"

• Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens Classics | DVD | (03/07/2017) from £6.47   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The first BBC television adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, Our Mutual Friend (1959) is now available for the first time to own on DVD. Starring Paul Danman and Zena Walker, and featuring Golden Globe nominee David McCallum and Oscar nominee Rachel Roberts. When waterman Gaffer Hexam (Julian Somers) and daughter Lizzie (Rachel Roberts) fish a battered corpse from the Thames, it is identified as that of John Harmon. Had Harmon lived, his father s will required him to marry pretty Bella Wilfer (Zena Walker). Instead, the substantial estate passes on to Mr and Mrs Boffin (Richard Pearson and Marda Vanne), a kindhearted couple who adopt Bella. The mysterious John Rokesmith (Paul Daneman) becomes their trusted secretary, and they engage one-legged schemer Silas Wegg (Esmond Knight) to entertain them with nightly readings. Lizzie is pursued by two suitors in the shape of work shy barrister Eugene Wrayburn (David McCallum) and wily Bradley Headstone (Alex Scott), and they become bitter rivals. But what of Rokesmith s true identity? And can the course of love and destiny run smooth?

• Far From The Madding Crowd | DVD | (13/09/2004) from £17.98   |  Saving you £-4.99 (-38.40%)   |  RRP £12.99

  John Schlesinger's solid adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel sees three rival suitors vying for the affections of the beautiful Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie decked out in a variety of bonnets and frilly dresses), who has just inherited a farm. The men in her life are stout, whiskered yeoman Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), an impoverished local farmer; neurotic, repressed squire William Boldwood (Peter Finch); and handsome rascal Sgt Troy (Terrence Stamp), who dresses as if he's Flashman and breaks women's hearts for a hobby.Thanks to cameraman Nic Roeg and production designer Richard MacDonald (who also worked for Joseph Losey), 19th-century Dorset looks as pretty and as picturesque as a John Constable reproduction on top of a biscuit tin. Not that Schlesinger or screenwriter Frederic Raphael underplay the duress of rural life. We see the hardship of the farm workers' lives as the seasons turn. The film opens with a spectacular sequence in which Gabriel Oak's dog drives his flock of sheep over a cliff, thereby forcing him into penury. Whether hunger or heartbreak, every character here suffers. Bathsheba (like the model Christie plays in Darling) is a free-spirit in a society in which women's rights are severely restricted. --Geoffrey Macnab

• The One That Got Away | DVD | (11/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  War drama story of Franz Von Werra the German pilot who when captured refuses to remain caged. Based on real life events...