"Actor: Sibylla Budd"

• The Secret Life Of Us - Series 1 - Part 2 | DVD | (27/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Take one apartment block in Melbourne eight twenty-somethings add some love friendship and vodka shots and you've got the dynamic and addictive Australian series 'The Secret Life Of Us'. Actor Miranda lives with boyfriend Richie a fellow actor and their scaffolder friend Will. Gabrielle lives with boyfriend Jason a lawyer whose morals unfortunately do not extend to his personal life. Happy go lucky Kelly lives with beautiful but insecure doctor Alex and would-be-author Evan whose philosophy on life is You never know what'll happen next - or who it will happen with. All you can do is hope it turns out ok - and that you remember most of it.

• The Secret Life of Us : Series 1, Part 1 | DVD | (27/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The Secret Life of Us follows eight twentysomethings sharing three apartments in a Melbourne residential block, and may well be Channel 4's best-kept secret. Buried in a mid-week late-night slot the show has nevertheless developed a cult following as an antipodean answer to This Life, though one mercifully free of amateurish shaky photography. This is actually a good-looking soap spiced with post-watershed language, sex, nudity and a refreshing dose of humour--think Sex and the City meets Coupling, or Dawson's Creek goes to The Book Group. The show takes a while to get going, introducing too many characters too quickly in disorientating fashion, but becomes engrossing entertainment filled with realistically young, aimless and confused, if not very likeable characters. Central to the show is Alex (Claudia Karvan, soon to become much more famous in Star Wars: Episode III) giving a strong performance as an emotional insecure doctor who sets things rolling by having a fling with her best friend's boyfriend. Samuel Johnson meanwhile is the highly sexed struggling novelist whose work in progress, the titular Secret Life of Us offers commentary on the ever more tangled web of romance, deception and friendship. It's Australian drama for those who have outgrown Melbourne's Neighbours. On the DVD: The Secret Life of Us comes to DVD in an anamorphically enhanced 16:9 transfer which looks fine, showing just a little graininess in the darker scenes. The sound is Dolby Prologic and is more than adequate given the small-scale, intimate nature of the production. There are optional subtitles. --Gary S Dalkin

• The Bet | DVD | (08/02/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Award-winning Australian drama following a stockbroker who risks it all to win a 'who can make the most money' bet with a competitive colleague. With 000 and three months to make as much profit as possible Will finds himself engaged in a range of high stakes games and deception. Bending the rules to win he soon discovers that winning can cost more than he'd ever imagined...