"Actor: Ruth Holden"

• Big Top | DVD | (20/09/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A colourful upbeat comedy set in and around a travelling circus Big Top stars Amanda Holden John Thomson Sophie Thompson Ruth Madoc Bruce Mackinnon and Tony Robinson What do you do when you've advertised a death-defying stunt that everyone has bought tickets to see and the performer is just a little bit too injured? How do you manage a group of people who are so jealous of each other that they are happy to sabotage their colleagues' performances? How do you hold onto your star acrobat when he is being chased by immigration officials? Fraught with problems and dealing with a cacophony of egos Ring Mistress Lizzie (Amanda Holden) must somehow keep the whole thing going.

• Threads | DVD | (05/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The original BBC drama that shocked a generation. Set in the paranoia of nuclear war this chilling and BAFTA-award winning BBC2 drama was aired causing outrage and anxiety amongst the viewing public due to its graphic and realistic storytelling of a possible nuclear strike. After its initial airing Threads became a national talking point and became a powerful and terrifying glimpse into a post holocaust world after a devastating nuclear bomb. Even more terrifyin

• Threads | DVD | (10/07/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Hideously plausible when first broadcast in 1984, this BBC TV docu-drama now seems like a terrifying might-have-been, although a great deal of what it says about the probable aftermath of a nuclear attack remains horribly pertinent. Scripted by Barry Hines (author of the novel on which Ken Loach's Kes was based) and directed by Mick Jackson (who later went to Hollywood with The Bodyguard and Volcano), at the time Threads seemed like a response to the American TV movie The Day After although it stands nobly on its own. Showing the after-effects of World War III on the United Kingdom by concentrating on two Sheffield families linked by an unplanned pregnancy, it illustrates the scientific, political, medical and social consequences of the severing of the many vital connective "threads" that support a Western society. Grim in a particularly 1980s way, this is a compulsive if uncomfortable watch and accomplishes a great deal without the distraction of spectacle, picking through all the melted milk bottles and firing squad traffic wardens to find the human horror at the heart of it all. --Kim Newman