"Actor: Penny Morrell"

• Lucky Jim | DVD | (09/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Jim has managed to get a job in one of the top universities but all he has to do to cement a future is survive a terrible weekend at his fellow professors deliver a lecture on 'Merry England' and resist the temptations of Christine...

• The End Of The Affair | DVD | (21/08/2000) from £7.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  THE END OF THE AFFAIR is a brilliant and powerful story of love, betrayal and sexual jealousy.

• Make Mine Mink | DVD | (27/05/2002) from £7.28   |  Saving you £2.71 (37.23%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Make Mine Mink (1960) was adapted from a West End stage farce, Breath of Spring. In a mansion block in Knightsbridge, a gang of middle-aged biddies decide to brighten up "the dullness of the tea time of life" by staging a series of robberies on furriers, then donating the proceeds to charitable concerns. Terry Thomas as a retired army officer leads the gang, which includes Athene Seyler and Hattie Jacques, on a series of capers that nearly go awry when their maid, Billie Whitelaw, an ex-con and also a resident of the block, falls for a police officer. Among many funny scenes is a particular gem between Seyler and Kenneth Williams, her nephew to whom she hopes to palm off a stolen mink, and another where Terry Thomas enters a low-down dive to the accompaniment of the "Harry Lime theme". The playing of the whole cast is second to none under the direction of Robert Asher, who with his cameraman disguises the stage origins of the piece very adeptly. On the DVD: Make Mine Mink comes to DVD in 4:3 ratio with a mono soundtrack. The theatrical trailer is introduced by Terry Thomas, who presents us to his gang of fur thieves as the voice on the soundtrack announces him as "fur, fur funnier than you've seen him before". More TT tomfoolery can be found in the three-disc Terry Thomas Collection. --Adrian Edwards

• Benny Hill - Double Helpings | DVD | (07/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Featuring two programmes: 'The Very Best Of Benny Hill' and 'The Crazy World Of Benny Hill'.

• Early Bird, The / Press For Time | DVD | (12/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Norman Wisdom reprises his best-loved character, the comically inept Pitkin, in 1965's The Early Bird, ably supported once again by Edward Chapman in his final appearance as Mr Grimsdale. This time around Wisdom is the only milkman working for Grimsdale's Dairy, a small business threatened by a menacing large corporation in the shape of Consolidated Dairies and their electric milk floats. Grimsdale and Pitkin must evoke the Dunkirk spirit to save their family firm from the grasp of the faceless giant. Of course, the wafer-thin plot is the merest excuse for a series of calamitous set pieces in which Wisdom wreaks havoc in his trademark bumbling manner. The best bits involve a disastrous game of golf, the usual shenanigans with a fire hose and a virtuoso tour de force opening sequence as the household struggles to wake up in the morning, all set to Ron Goodwin's tongue-in-cheek music score. --Mark Walker In Press for Time Norman Wisdom offered his version of the crusading reporter movie, though by 1966 time was running out for Norman's style of big-screen comedy. Perhaps a sign of his growing frustration with the formulaic nature of his pictures was that he stretched himself to play not just his usual underdog hero, but also his own mother and his grandfather, the Prime Minister. Wisdom also cowrote the movie in which, as a reporter in a small seaside town, he causes chaos for the council, organises a beauty parade and dresses as a suffragette. Though now nearing the end of his years as a movie star, Wisdom shows himself to still be as polished as ever at his own brand of good-natured slapstick. --Gary S Dalkin

• The Early Bird | DVD | (12/11/2001) from £16.24   |  Saving you £-3.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Norman Wisdom reprises his best-loved character, the comically inept Pitkin, in 1965's The Early Bird, ably supported once again by Edward Chapman in his final appearance as Mr Grimsdale. This time around Wisdom is the only milkman working for Grimsdale's Dairy, a small business threatened by a menacing large corporation in the shape of Consolidated Dairies and their electric milk floats. Grimsdale and Pitkin must evoke the Dunkirk spirit to save their family firm from the grasp of the faceless giant. Of course, the wafer-thin plot is the merest excuse for a series of calamitous set pieces in which Wisdom wreaks havoc in his trademark bumbling manner. The best bits involve a disastrous game of golf, the usual shenanigans with a fire hose and a virtuoso tour de force opening sequence as the household struggles to wake up in the morning. Wisdom's own brand of Jerry Lewis-inspired clowning, with mugging and pratfalls aplenty, is all good clean fun with little or none of the smutty innuendo that characterised the contemporary Carry On series. He carries this film, as he does all his others, solely on the strength of his winningly naïve charm: this is innocent comedy from the days before supermarkets really did wreck all the local businesses, not to mention from the days before The Godfather gave a whole new spin on the comedy value of going to bed with your horse. On the DVD: There are no extra features on this disc at all. Given Wisdom's household-name status and the longevity of these much-loved movies, this seems like a sadly missed opportunity. The 4:3 picture has not been digitally remastered and shows its age, as does the muddy mono soundtrack. Only Ron Goodwin's wonderfully tongue-in-cheek music score comes across reasonably well. --Mark Walker