"Actor: Nicholas"

• NYPD Blue - Season 2 | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Originally broadcast in 1994, the second series of NYPD Blue was disrupted by the departure of star David Caruso (Detective John Kelly) after just four episodes--apparently under less than amicable circumstances. He was ably replaced as Detective Sipowicz's partner by Jimmy Smits as the smoother Detective Bobby Simone, and the series managed not to miss a beat. More streamlined and downbeat than its predecessor Hill Street Blues (also created by Steven Bochco), NYPD Blue continued second time around to mix near-the-knuckle detective work in pursuit of New York's scummiest with more character and relationship-based drama. Although it's regrettable that its ethnic-minority characters such as Lieutenant Fancy are increasingly marginalised here, the series is more comfortable, and even has fun with, regular characters such as the nervy Detective Medavoy and his on-off paramour Donna Abandando. Andy Sipowicz's simmering, tough-nosed recovering alcoholic is increasingly and amusingly put to the test in a number of situations, including a murder investigation in a gay bar; being sung to at his own wedding by Nic Turturro's Detective Martinez; and a love scene in the shower in which we experience the dubious pleasure of seeing his bare bum. New female introductions, such as the strong but sympathetic Detective Lesniak, also helped to shake up the series with a much-needed oestrogen boost. There's also fun to be had in spotting a number of guest appearances by up-and-coming actors destined to make it in their own right such as Richard Schiff and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) and Debra Messing (Will and Grace). On the DVD: NYPD Blue, Series 2 DVD box set contains a number of extras, primarily a one-hour documentary in which the cast and programme-makers discuss the series episode by episode, the self-congratulatory mood only broken by some subtle digs at departing star David Caruso (apparently, he walked straight off the set following his final take into a waiting limo without any farewells). There's also a small piece paying tribute to the music of theme-writer Mike Post and an item covering the relationship between Sipowicz and Assistant DA Sylvia Costas, in whose marriage this series culminates. --David Stubbs

• Two of Us, the: the Complete S | DVD | (31/12/2019) from £12.53   |  Saving you £0.46 (3.67%)   |  RRP £12.99

• Touching The Void | DVD | (05/04/2004) from £12.97   |  Saving you £7.02 (54.12%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The remarkable true story of two mountaineers whose descent from a 21,000 foot peak in the Peruvian Andes turned into a nightmare when one of them fell into a crevasse and was left for dead.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, With Feeling | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Once More With Feeling", a much needed shaft of lightness in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's dark sixth series, demonstrates that a "special" episode can be genuinely special. It preserves the show's continuity for its regular watchers and also delights people who have never experienced it before. This is creator Joss Whedon's tribute to all the masters of the stage musical whom he admires--most obviously Stephen Sondheim--and a chance for his talented cast to display their usual tight ensemble and sing and dance while doing it. The premise is typical Buffy both in its whimsy and its emotional truth--a demon forces the inhabitants of Sunnydale to express their emotions truthfully and uncovers a variety of embarrassing secrets. The actual musical ability of the Buffy cast is variable--Amber Benson as Tara and Anthony Stewart Head as Giles are perhaps the only ones with enough musical talent to carry purely lyrical tunes, but Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy is a game little trooper who delivers her various patter songs with her usual efficiency and charm. Emma Caulfield as the ex-demon Anya is the big surprise, her short paranoid riff on the subject of that ultimate evil, bunny rabbits is quite extraordinary; Broadway hoofer Hinton Battle is fabulous as Sweet: "I can bring whole cities to ruin and find time to get some soft shoe in." --Roz Kaveney

• Going Off Big Time | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £9.75   |  Saving you £10.24 (105.03%)   |  RRP £19.99

  New Brit gangster pic about the irresistible rise of a Merseyside 'firm.'

• Only Fools And Horses - All The Best - Vol. 3 | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £6.49   |  Saving you £9.50 (59.40%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The third and final installment of the best episodes from series 1-7! Yuppy Love: Del joins the yuppy set all red braces and filofax and makes quite an impressive impact at the local wine bar! Danger UXB: Del's got hold of a consignment of dolls. However lusty Linda and Erotic Estelle is not quite what he had in mind... Stage Fright: Del turns impressario at the Starlight Cabaret then discovers exactly who the real owner is! Three Men' and 'A Woman And A

• The X Files: Season 5 | DVD | (27/12/2004) from £19.73   |  Saving you £15.26 (77.34%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Mulder continues his search for a cure for Scully's illness even as her genetically altered DNA takes her to the brink of death. Scully's DNA comes into play once again when it proves that she is somehow the mother of a little girl named Emily an incident that could only be related to her abduction years earlier. But in the end it is a young boy named Gibson Praise whose body may actually contain the elusive proof Mulder has been searching for so desperately. Episodes comprise:

• The Girl Next Door | DVD | (09/08/2004) from £5.15   |  Saving you £12.84 (249.32%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A straight-arrow high-school student falls in love with the perfect 'girl-next-door', only to discover she's a former porn star.

• Coast BBC Series Eight | DVD | (20/05/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Coast continues to explore the edge of our lives the coastline that marries us to the sea. Through a history of assault from Nazi Germany freshwater voles and the infamous Guernsey Privateers; the workers' coast of shipbuilders fishermen and seaside entertainers; the joys of sunbathing and the history of Thomas Cook; the magnificent estuaries of the Firth of Forth the Severn and the Thames; this is the history of Britain as told from cliff to sea. Nick Crane is joined by a team of expert presenters including Neil Oliver Miranda Krestovnikoff Mark Horton Tessa Dunlop Andy Torbet Ian McMillan Ruth Goodman Nick Hewitt and newcomers Sarah Beynon and Cassie Newland as they explore the riches to be found along our Coast. Episodes Comprise: Invaders of the Isles The Workers' Coast Joy of the Coast Rivers and Seas Collide The Secret Life of Sea Cliffs All at Sea

• Raging Fire | Blu Ray | (31/01/2022) from £18.75   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  While conducting a raid to arrest a drug lord, the police encounter a group of masked thugs. In a violent act of sabotage, the gang steals the drugs and murders the police officers on the scene. Arriving late, Inspector Cheung Shung-bong (Donnie Yen) is devastated to see the brutal aftermath, discovering the cop killers are led by Ngo (Nicholas Tse, New Police Story, Shaolin), his former protégé. Once a rising star in the police who was driven to a life of crime, he now bears a grudge. As their fates become entangled again, a score will be settled once and for all Featuring international action star Donnie Yen (Ip Man franchise, Flash Point, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), the film is packed with exhilarating action and Yen's signature world class fight choreography. Last film of the late legendary Hong Kong director Benny Chan who was beloved for action films like The White Storm, Call of Heroes and Jackie Chan pictures like New Police Story. Topping the Chinese mainland box office for 28 days and it has grossed US$210 million. 100% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. Strong word-of-mouth and raving reviews

• The X Files: Season 4 | DVD | (27/12/2004) from £16.90   |  Saving you £18.09 (107.04%)   |  RRP £34.99

  In Season 4 of The X-Files, Scully is a bit upset by her on-off terminal cancer and Mulder is supposed to shoot himself in the season finale (did anyone believe that?), but in episode after episode the characters still plod dutifully around atrocity sites tossing off wry witticisms in that bland investigative demeanour out of fashion among TV cops since Dragnet. Perhaps the best achievement of this season is "Home", the most unpleasant horror story ever presented on prime-time US TV. It's not a comfortable show--confronted with this ghastly parade of incest, inbreeding, infanticide and mutilation, you'd think M & S would drop the jokes for once--but shows a willingness to expand the envelope. By contrast, ventures into golem, reincarnation, witchcraft and Invisible Man territory throw up run-of-the-mill body counts, spotlighting another recurrent problem. For heroes, M & S rarely do anything positive: they work out what is happening after all the killer's intended victims have been snuffed ("Kaddish"), let the monster get away ("Sanguinarium") and cause tragedies ("The Field Where I Died"). No wonder they're stuck in the FBI basement where they can do the least damage. The series has settled enough to play variations on earlier hits: following the liver vampire, we have a melanin vampire ("Teliko") and a cancer vampire ("Leonard Betts"), and return engagements for the oily contact lens aliens and the weasely ex-Agent Krycek ("Tunguska"/"Terma"). Occasional detours into send-up or post-modernism are indulged, yielding both the season's best episode ("Small Potatoes") and its most disappointing ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"). "Small Potatoes", with the mimic mutant who tries out Mulder's life and realises what a loser he is (how many other pin-up series heroes get answerphone messages from their favourite phone-sex lines?), works as a genuine sci-fi mystery--for once featuring a mutant who doesn't have to kill people to live--and as character insight. --Kim Newman

• Young Sherlock Holmes Steelbook | Blu Ray | (30/01/2023) from £21.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The classic from director Barry Levinson, writer Chris Columbus and executive producer Steven Spielberg comes to Blu-ray™ in this LIMITED EDITION Steelbook®. Following the teenage years of Sherlock Holmeswho meets and befriends his future sidekick John Watson during their first semester of boarding schoolthe adventure begins after a series of deaths occur on campus. The groundbreaking Oscar®nominated* special effects includes the very first use of a completely computer-generated character in cinema.

• Conviction - The Complete Series | DVD | (19/09/2005) from £13.98   |  Saving you £6.00 (50.04%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Exploring the idea that everyone has the ability to kill and investigating what it is that can trigger the reaction in any of us Conviction is a dark and innovative drama. Penned by Bill Gallagher (Clocking Off) Brothers Chrissie (William Ash) and Ray (Nicholas Gleaves) are part of a team of CID officers who have a constant battle against a growing sense of vigilantism on their patch. However the murder of a 12-year-old girl heightens the tensions and le

• 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

• A Single Man | Blu Ray | (07/06/2010) from £8.95   |  Saving you £11.04 (123.35%)   |  RRP £19.99

  "A Single Man" is a romantic tale of love interrupted, the isolation that is an inherent part of the human condition, and ultimately the importance of the seemingly smaller moments in life.

• The Story of Only Fools and Horses | DVD | (07/04/2003) from £4.03   |  Saving you £11.96 (296.77%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It's been emotional. It's been gripping. But most of all it's been completely hilarious. 21 years after first appearing on our screens audiences (which have reached 24 million) are still devoted to the antics of Del and Rodney and their muckers. But what is it about this Peckham posse that makes their marketplace wheelings and dealings so endearing to generations? Who would know better than the show's writer and the cast..? For the first time ever John Sullivan David Jason Nich

• Choose | DVD | (24/01/2011) from £9.70   |  Saving you £3.29 (25.30%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Choose

• Othello | DVD | (22/05/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Kill Your Friends | DVD | (04/04/2016) from £5.75   |  Saving you £12.24 (212.87%)   |  RRP £17.99

  An A & R man working at the height of the Britpop music craze goes to extremes in order to find his next hit.

• Doctor Who - The Three Doctors | DVD | (24/11/2003) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made to mark the series' tenth anniversary, Doctor Who: The Three Doctors finds Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor teaming-up with the Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell incarnations to battle a universe-threatening foe. Omega (played by an excellent Stephen Thorne) is the Timelord who gave his race the power necessary for time travel. Long presumed dead he is actually trapped in an anti-matter universe inside a black hole, and is scheming an epic revenge. Set in UNIT HQ, Omega's domain and a chalk pit, Bob Baker and David Martin's yarn is both nonsensical and more wildly ambitious than the BBC effects unit could possibly visualise. This is so much the case that the best moments come with the metaphysically chilling scene in which Omega is unmasked, and in the bickering rivalry between Pertwee and Troughton. Sadly Hartnell was seriously ill with arteriosclerosis, so his brief scenes were all taped in a day and played on a monitor in the TARDIS, the reason given that the First Doctor is trapped in a "time eddy". If hardly a classic this is still a meatier tale than The Two Doctors (1985), which starred Troughton and Colin Baker, and it features ever-dependable support from Katy Manning as Jo Grant and Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier. On the DVD: Doctor Who: The Three Doctors is presented in the original 4:3 ratio with good mono sound. The introductory 16-mm film footage is very grainy and lined, but later exteriors are good and the interior video-shot material in fine. The commentary by Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney and producer Barry Letts is informative and funny. Extras include excerpts from a highly entertaining 1973 Pebble Mill at One with Patrick Troughton and BBC props designer Bernard Wilkie (20 min) and a 1973 retrospective on the show from Blue Peter featuring Pertwee with the then new Whomobile, all presented by ex-Who companion Peter Purves. There are highlights from a BSkyB Doctor Who weekend from 1990, with brief interviews with Courtney, David Martin, Bob Baker, Pertwee, producer John Nathan Turner and writer Terrance Dicks (10 min). Rather more exciting is the appearances of the warm and witty Pertwee, Manning, and a very late Courtney at the 1993 Panopticon SF convention (29 min). There are also two trailers, info text and a scored photo gallery. --Gary S Dalkin