"Actor: Patience Collier"

• The French Lieutenant's Woman | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £9.95   |  Saving you £3.04 (30.55%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Writer Harold Pinter (Betrayal) and director Karel Reisz (Isadora) take an experimental spin with John Fowles's magnificent novel set in Victorian England, and come up with something puzzling. Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep play the forbidden lovers in Fowles's story, but in a parallel story line they also play contemporary actors performing those characters in a movie production and having an affair of their own during off-hours. Got that? Considering that Fowles himself presents alternative endings in his novel, something equally eccentric is called for here. But little is accomplished by this intertwining of a fictional past and present, and the opportunity to do justice to a great story is lost. On the plus side, Irons and Streep are instantly striking as a natural couple on screen, and their presence makes watching The French Lieutenant's Woman easy enough despite the larger problems. --Tom Keogh

• Countess Dracula Special Edition | DVD | (11/09/2006) from £11.98   |  Saving you £5.00 (50.05%)   |  RRP £14.99

  In medieval Europe aging Countess Elisabeth rules harshly with the help of lover Captain Dobi. Finding that washing in the blood of young girls makes her young again she gets Dobi to start abducting likely candidates. The Countess - pretending to be her own daughter - starts dallying with a younger man much to Dobi's annoyance. The disappearances cause mounting terror locally and when she finds out that only the blood of a virgin does the job Dobi is sent out again with a more difficult task.

• French Lieutenant's Woman (Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (30/03/2020) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  An astounding array of talent came together for the big-screen adaptation of John Fowles's novel The French Lieutenant's Woman, a postmodern masterpiece that had been considered unfilmable. With an ingenious script by the Nobel Prizewinning playwright HAROLD PINTER (Betrayal), British New Wave trailblazer KAREL REISZ (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) transforms Fowles's tale of scandalous romance into an arresting, hugely entertaining movie about cinema. In Pinter's reimagining, JEREMY IRONS (Dead Ringers) and MERYL STREEP (Sophie's Choice) star in parallel narratives, as a Victorian-era gentleman and the social outcast he risks everything to love, and as the contemporary actors cast in those roles and immersed in their own forbidden affair. The French Lieutenant's Woman, shot by the consummate cinematographer FREDDIE FRANCIS (Glory) and scored by the venerated composer and conductor CARL DAVIS, is a beguiling, intellectually nimble feat of filmmaking, starring a pair of legendary actors in early leading roles. Special Edition Features New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray New introduction by film scholar Ian Christie New interviews with actors Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, editor John Bloom, and composer Carl Davis Episode of The South Bank Show from 1981 featuring director Karel Reisz, novelist John Fowles, and screenwriter Harold Pinter Trailer PLUS: An essay by film scholar Lucy Bolton

• David Copperfield | DVD | (19/09/2005) from £8.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A superb BBC adaptation of 'David Copperfield' one of Charles Dickens' best-loved and indeed most autobiographical of novels.

• The Girl On The Boat | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £6.49   |  Saving you £6.50 (100.15%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Sam Marlowe travels to the States with the intention of convincing his aunt to let him rent out her summer house in England. But when the aunt discovers that Eustace Sam's cousin is planning to secretly marry she sends them back to England. On the return trip Sam meets and falls for Eustace's ex-fiancee Billie with hilarious results. Adapted from the P.G. Wodehouse novel.

• Sapphire And Steel - Assignments 1-3 | DVD | (12/08/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £40.99

  One of the oddest shows ever mounted for mainstream UK television, Sapphire & Steel was one of ITV's many short-lived attempts at grabbing the sci-fi cult status of the BBC's Doctor Who. Ex-Man From U.N.C.L.E. David McCallum and ex-Avenger Joanna Lumley play human-looking incarnations of the eponymous substances, mysterious investigators working at the behest of an apparent God of Order and zipping about TARDIS-like to cope with anomalies in the time-stream that manifest as apparent supernatural forces in remote English locales like an isolated farmhouse (Adventure One), a deserted rural railway station (Adventure Two) and a high-rise block of flats (Adventure Three). McCallum and Lumley play their "medium atomic weights" with blank style and a few touches of baffled humour, not to mention visual flair in the case of Lumley's blue fashions and occasional glowing eyes. But the lengthy serial format, strictly limited guest casts and claustrophobic confinement to studio floor sets tend to mean individual serials straggle on with a great deal of repetition, providing longeurs as six or eight-part stories seem to take forever to get moving and then resolve. Shot on video, with a few strange 1970s effects (evil follow-spots, floating pillows), this remains prime cult material, though it's hard to sit still for more than one episode at a time. It will take an extremely devoted fan to get through all three adventures in under six months. On the DVD: Sapphire & Steel on disc has to be reckoned a disappointment when compared with the wealth of extra material included on the Gerry Anderson or Doctor Who DVDs. This set stretches only to a few press releases and a TV Times article from the launch of the series that tries hard to build up a mystique about the show which it would take some years to actually acquire. There are basic bios of the two stars, and some unresonant stills. Image quality-wise, this looks much the same as previous VHS releases: shot on video, with only a few tiny film inserts for Adventure Three (on the roof of a London building), the series' transfer to DVD is plagued by artefacting of various kinds (some of which can just about be passed off as visual effects), but then again so were the original transmissions. The pristine look is especially unfortunate in exposing the extremely ordinary trickery as far less terrifying than the onscreen characters make them out to be. --Kim Newman

• Sapphire And Steel - Assignments 4-6 | DVD | (07/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £40.99

  Starring Joanna Lumley and David McCallum Sapphire And Steel was one of the most enigmatic and acclaimed of all ITC-produced adventures. It continues to baffle and delight viewers twenty years later. Sapphire (Lumley) and Steel (McCallum) are the mysterious agents charged with protecting the Universe from the malevolent forces of Time with their uncanny powers. Assignment IV an evil amorphous entity uses photographs to move between time dimensions. It takes over a junkshop and entraps the inhabitants. A golden anniversary party where the guests are being killed off is the subject of Assignment V. Sapphire and Steel meet another element/detective Silver at an abandoned petrol station in Assignment VI and become embroiled in mystery.

• House of Cards (imprint Limited Edition Blu-Ray) | Blu Ray | (07/01/2022) from £28.30   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In 1960s Paris, an American boxer stumbles upon an international fascist conspiracy that aims to create a new world order. Directed by John Guillermin, starring George Peppard, Inger Stevens, and Orson Welles. Rarely seen since it's original theatrical run, it marked the second time that Peppard and Guillermin worked together (they had previously collaborated on the 1966 film The Blue Max).

• The Girl On The Boat | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Sam Marlowe travels to the States with the intention of convincing his aunt to let him rent out her summer house in England. But when the aunt discovers that Eustace Sam's cousin is planning to secretly marry she sends them back to England. On the return trip Sam meets and falls for Eustace's ex-fiancee Billie with hilarious results. Adapted from the P.G. Wodehouse novel.