"Actor: Susie Blake"

• Victoria Wood: Collection | DVD | (17/10/2016) from £7.37   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Victoria Wood - At The Albert Hall - Live | DVD | (25/11/2002) from £11.52   |  Saving you £5.73 (55.85%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Victoria Wood Live at the Albert Hall provides proof, if any were needed, that after two decades at the top of her profession, Wood is one of a small handful of British comedians of either sex capable of filling the country's largest venues. For the consistently high quality of her penetrating observations of the mundane she has no equal. Recorded in 2001, this performance has all the hallmarks of her microscopic examinations of life's perplexing minutiae and trivia. From her recent hysterectomy to Paul Daniels, from the NHS help line to wheelie bin covers, from Americans in Disneyworld to the ageism of catalogue mailing lists, nothing escapes Wood's attention. Not even in-vogue authors: she refuses to read "Captain Corelli's friggin' Mandolin" as it sits reproachfully at her bedside. Wood even provides her own interval act: a devastatingly accurate parody of a vulgar, second-rate cabaret singer shot to stardom on the wings of a cruise ship docu-soap. Jane McDonald's sense of humour will never face a harder test. More poignant are Wood's observations on parenthood and marriage, with all the physical ailments of middle age ("We've only got one fully operating leg between us"). She has since separated from her husband, the magician Geoffrey Durham. Fans will await the impact of that on her stand-up material with some interest. --Piers Ford

• Victoria Wood - All The Trimmings | DVD | (25/11/2001) from £8.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings contains exactly what it says on the box. Harking back to the classic BBC Christmas comedy specials of yesteryear, the show features a star-studded cast: Alan Rickman, Richard E Grant, Michael Parkinson, Bob Monkhouse, Hugh Laurie, Angela Rippon, Roger Moore, Caroline Aherne, the list goes on. The show takes a typically idiosyncratic canter through a dream set of telly programmes for Christmas Day. Thus we get expertly played skits of A Christmas Carol (with Delia Smith as the cook); Brassed Off (in which Tony Blair solves the North/South divide by declaring everything The South); Brief Encounter (Parky as the station master, with a side order of drugs and lesbianism); a regency romantic drama (with the line "could you not stick your hand in your muff?") and lots more. What makes the production a true cut above, however, is the linking theme that takes a blatant pot shot at the modern BBC--or as Wood sees it--BBC Upmarket, BBC Downmarket, BBC Newmarket (for racing), BBC Makeover, BBC Takeover, etc. This is funny, cutting and achingly on the ball about the state of modern television.--Ian Watson

• Victoria Wood - An Audience With Victoria Wood | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £6.79   |  Saving you £3.20 (47.13%)   |  RRP £9.99

  As Victoria Wood once said, "There's nothing you can't say if you say it in the right way". And she goes on to prove that triumphantly in An Audience with Victoria Wood, recorded in front of fellow celebs (whom she sends up effortlessly, describing her long-time collaborator Julie Walters as "the lady with the split ends"). Victoria Wood may be the queen of suburbia but her endless takes on the finer details of banality have an acuity of which Alan Bennett would be proud. Most people cannot do monologue without lapsing into self-consciousness. But she's just brilliant. Her depiction of a nervy woman attempting to conduct a survey in the street, for instance, is priceless: "Here's my ID. Yes, I do look rather startled. It was taken in a photo booth and someone had just poked an éclair through the curtain". She's like Joyce Grenfell on speed. And it's that surreal juxtaposition of the commonplace and the wacky that makes her routines anything but. Even when she takes up residence at the piano, belting out home-made ballads (and this video includes the famous "Let's Do It"), she's both touching and amusing. At one point, she suggests that the British are no good at having fun. Get this video and prove her wrong. --Harriet Smith

• Parents | DVD | (29/07/2013) from £8.08   |  Saving you £11.91 (59.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When Jenny Pope (Sally Phillips) loses her job house and savings after getting 'punchy' with a colleague she and her family are forced to move back in with her parents Len (Tom Conti) and Alma (Susie Blake). Along for the upheaval are hubby Nick (Darren Strange) a struggling self-proclaimed entrepreneur and kids Sam and Becky. Three generations living under the same roof isn't ideal but beneath the spats and squabbles are some home truths. One that your parents are never too old to completely utterly annoy you. And two that you're never too old to learn from them.