"Actor: Sally Farmiloe"

• Howard's Way - Series 1 | DVD | (20/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The BBC's answer to the glossy soaps of 1980s America came with - a then - massive 1 000 000 budget and one of the catchiest theme tunes this side of Black Beauty (courtesy of Eastenders tune-smith Simon May)! Maurice Colborne (Gangsters) stars as Tom Howard recently made redundant as an aircraft designer who decides to ply his trade in the world of boats instead; taking the reigns at a run-down local construction yard. A family of considerable wealth and pre

• Spanish Fly | DVD | (22/04/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The screen vibrates with bounderism and caddishness when comedy icons Terry-Thomas and Leslie Phillips star as rivals in this sunny, mid-'70s sex comedy set on the Mediterranean island of Minorca. Spanish Fly is featured here in a brand-new transfer from original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. Despite the scenery and sunshine, expat Sir Percy de Courcy feels dejected. In a cunning wheeze to make some much-needed money, he's bought 100,000 gallons of local wine, ho...

• Spanish Fly | DVD | (24/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The opening credits of Spanish Fly promise "Leslie Phillips vs. Terry-Thomas", making this the British comic innuendo version of King Kong vs. Godzilla or Frankenstein vs. the Wolf Man, with the two masters of fnarr-fnarr lecherous English lounge lizardry pitted against each other. It's a sunstruck, terminally silly slice of fluff of the stripe that passed for a sex film in 1976 ("Go and butter yourself", someone says) but seems almost comically innocent these days. The sort of film that boasts special credits for women's fashions by Cornelia James and underwear by Janet Reger, it tells the story of a gap-toothed con man (Thomas) exiled to sunny Spain. He adds ground-up cantharides to undrinkable plonk to create a market for aphrodisiac wine, and impotent underwear tycoon (Phillips) benefits from the effects of the product as he gets to grips with four lovely models, until his wife (Sue Lloyd) shows up and a side-effect means he starts barking like a dog. The stars are game, but the material--from a story by producer Peter James, now a horror novelist--is skimpier than the starlets' bikinis and none of the pretty girls has any comic timing (though they all get topless scenes). Students of British pop culture will note the bizarre juxtaposition of hiring an uncredited Francis Matthews, the upright voice of Captain Scarlet, to dub the roles of a gay Spanish photographer and (for one bad gag) a disgusted dog. On the DVD: The picture is fullscreen. There are no extras.--Kim Newman