"Director: Andy Wilson (IV)"

• Spooks: Season 2 | DVD | (20/09/2004) from £13.24   |  Saving you £26.75 (202.04%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Revelling in its reputation for pulling no punches, the second series of the BBC's slick spy drama Spooks maintains the quality of its award-winning first year, serving up enough nail-biting moments of genuine tension to outweigh any concern that occasionally it courts controversy for no better reason than to cock a snook at the notoriously timid Auntie Beeb. The Islamic terrorist episode unsurprisingly received a great deal of negative publicity, but a show that prides itself on its contemporary edge could hardly ignore such an issue. Other episodes tackle computer hackers, Eastern European terrorists, Columbian drug cartels, inter-service territorial disputes with the CIA and even a mutiny in the army. One of the strongest episodes, set entirely within the sealed-off MI5 Section B department, tracks the team's individual reactions to what might be a drill, or a real and devastating VX gas attack. Throughout, this year focuses a great deal on the team's personal problems, notably Tom Quinn's chaotic love life, which ultimately brings his loyalty to the service into question. Cast changes introduce some new faces, while some old ones pop up in unwelcome places (Jenny Agutter relishing her new role as a villain). Pacy direction and snappy editing, generous use of slo-mo, split-screen and dramatic music all add to the tension inherent in scripts that bring a modern, youthful edge to the creaky old spy genre. Only the final episode resorts to some hackneyed plot contrivances in a rather strained bid to produce the now-obligatory cliffhanger. --Mark Walker

• Spooks - Complete Season 4 | DVD | (04/09/2006) from £7.51   |  Saving you £32.48 (432.49%)   |  RRP £39.99

  MI5; not 9 to 5! The stakes are higher than ever for Adam Harry and the team as a series of terrorist attacks and political cover-ups threaten national security on an unprecedented scale. Packed with classic Spooks' intrigue Series 4 features all ten episodes plus a host of never before seen special features shot exclusively for the DVD. Series 4 is released just before the new TV broadcast in September. So make sure you pre-order your copy now to see all ten episodes in time for Series 5!

• Gormenghast | DVD | (05/06/2000) from £7.59   |  Saving you £-1.59 (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.00

  The BBC's lavish, glowingly designed adapation of Mervyn Peake's eccentrically brilliant novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast is a triumph of casting. Ian Richardson's Lear-like depiction of the mad earl of a remote, vast, ritual-obsessed building is matched by the brutal pragmatism of Celia Imrie as his wife, the synchronised madness of Zoe Wanamaker and Lynsey Baxter as his twin sisters and the duplicitous charm of Jonathan Rhys-Meyer as Steerpike, the kitchen-boy determined to take over no matter how many deaths it costs. John Sessions is surprisingly touching as Prunesquallor, the family doctor who realises almost too late what Steerpike intends. It is always tricky to film a book dear to the hearts of its admirers: Wilson and his design team achieve a look rather more pre-Raphaelite than Peake's own illustrations, shabby velvets, garish sunlight and dank stone passages. The score by Richard Rodney Bennett is full of attractive surprises--fanfares and waltzes and apotheoses--and John Tavener's choral additions are plausibly parts of the immemorial ritual of Gormenghast. On the DVD: The double DVD comes with scene selection, an informative half-hour documentary on the making of the serial and a slide gallery of costume designs, characters and their dooms. --Roz Kaveney