"Director: Duncan Wood"

• The Bargee | DVD | (15/03/2010) from £7.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (100.13%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Hemel Pike (Harry H. Corbett) is a barge operator who takes advantage of his position to seduce a series of women in the towns along his canal route. When one of them falls pregnant however his days as a canal Casanova are numbered.

• Steptoe And Son - Series 1 | DVD | (13/09/2004) from £6.87   |  Saving you £6.12 (89.08%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Fresh from their success with Tony Hancock, writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson originally planned Steptoe and Son as a one-off for the BBC’s Comedy Playhouse. It was quickly turned into a series, originally broadcast in 1962, and the six episodes here (including the Comedy Playhouse "pilot") contain all the classic ingredients that were to keep the show on British TV screens until 1974. Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell are the father and son rag and bone men, constantly bickering, constantly at each other’s throats. Corbett’s Harold harbours ridiculous bourgeois aspirations, hoping to impress the "birds" with asparagus soup or his wine cellar, which has been painstakingly collected by draining the dregs of empty bottles. But all his efforts at social improvement are in vain, thanks to the mean-spirited efforts of his father Albert, who glories in his son’s contemptuous "dirty old man" tag, and who is content with life exactly as it is in the cast-off paradise of their ramshackle junk-filled boneyard. The show was groundbreaking at the time, depicting working-class people in light comedy instead of serious social drama as was the norm. It also differed significantly from Hancock’s Half Hour and other sitcoms, which featured comedians effectively playing themselves: Brambell and Corbett were real actors whose marvellous chemistry helped ensure the show’s longevity. In our modern throwaway culture, Steptoe and Son provides a window into a bygone era, when men with horses and carts routinely patrolled the streets recycling junk, without the need for government incentives or environmental pressure. On the DVD: Steptoe and Son, Series 1 has six episodes on one disc. The black and white picture shows its age quite badly, and the mono sound is equally fuzzy in places. There are no extras, which is a shame, as Galton and Simpson could surely have provided an illuminating commentary track. --Mark Walker

• Hancock: The Best Of Hancock | DVD | (01/10/2001) from £4.98   |  Saving you £8.01 (160.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Very Best of Hancock isn't just a miscellaneous compilation of his television work, rather it is five of the six episodes from Hancock's last season with the BBC in 1961. Writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson followed Hancock to television after making him a star on radio, and it is to them as much as to Hancock's lugubrious persona that these few shows owe their classic status. In a conscious effort to throw the spotlight more firmly on himself, Hancock had parted company with his radio cohorts in the transition to TV, and here for the first time he also dispensed with stalwart comedy partner Sid James. Thanks to Galton and Simpson, however, the gamble paid off handsomely and these shows remain some of the best sitcoms ever created for British television. No longer a resident of Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, here we find Hancock in Earl's Court in the first episode, "The Bedsitter". Whether trying vainly to live the life of a carefree bachelor, playing an old country character in a thinly disguised version of "The Archers" ("The Bowmans"), wrestling with the complexities of valve radio ("The Radio Ham"), annoying everyone in an awkward situation ("The Lift") or giving that famous pint of blood ("The Blood Donor"), Galton and Simpson provide Hancock with every opportunity to exercise his wonderful pomposity and pretentiousness with scripts full of comic invention and eminently quotable lines. Hugh Lloyd and June Whitfield are among the supporting cast.On the DVD: The disc includes a good recent interview with Galton and Simpson, who talk about their sometimes difficult relationship with the star. After Hancock used cue cards while recording "The Blood Donor", they reveal, he decided never to bother learning any lines again, even though this had a detrimental effect on his ability to use comic facial expressions ever afterwards. The picture and sound quality are what might be expected from TV of this vintage. --Mark Walker

• Some Will, Some Won't | DVD | (17/02/2014) from £8.99   |  Saving you £1.00 (11.12%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A stellar cast assembles for this sparkling comedy feature from 1970. Revisiting Mario Zampi's 1951 classic Laughter in Paradise and directed by veteran producer Duncan Wood - best known for his work with Tony Hancock during the late '50s and early '60s - Some Will, Some Won't is presented here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. In his will, arch-prankster Henry Russell charges his four beneficiaries to justify t...

• Cuckoo Patrol | DVD | (21/05/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The late Freddie Garrity (of Freddie and the Dreamers) stars in this 1967 Eternal films comedy. Directed by Duncan Woodwho produced Hancocks Half Hour, Steptoe and Son and Oh Brother amongst many others.A good British cast, Kenneth Connor, Victor Maddern, John Le Mesurier and Arthur Mullard tell the story of a troopof scout misfits, The Cuckoo Troop, led by Garrity on their way to scout camp and all the scrapes they stumble into!Picture and sound of excellent quality following extensive restoration work by Renown.

• Hancock's Half Hour - Vol. 2 - The Best Of | DVD | (08/08/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Tony Hancock stars with Sid James as the irrepressible tenant of 23 Railway Cuttings East Cheam. Hancock's Half-Hour is the yardstick against which all subsequent British sitcoms have been measured the vast majority failing to size up to its extremely high standards. Based on his famous radio show of the same name the TV run consolidated Tony Hancock's standing as Britain's leading comic of the day; the entertainer providing ample proof that his wonderfully flexible

• Oh Brother | DVD | (08/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  A well meaning Brother treads a thin line between acceptance and expulsion at Mountacres Priory...

• Steptoe And Son - The Very Best Of Steptoe And Son - Vol. 2 | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £7.52   |  Saving you £5.47 (72.74%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The second volume of The Very Best of Steptoe and Son contains five excellent episodes from the classic sitcom scripted by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who created Steptoe when Tony Hancock dispensed with their services in the early 1960s. The story of the acerbic but hopelessly pretentious Harold, would-be man about town longing in vain to escape from his rag-and-bone yard existence and his "dirty old man" of a father, is one of Britain's greatest sitcoms. Its underlying sadness somehow makes it all the funnier. "The Bath" is in black and white and features a wonderfully disgusting sequence of old man Albert retrieving pickled onions from his bathwater and putting them back in the jar. The other four episodes are from the 1970s and in colour: "Séance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard" features a young Patricia Routledge as a bogus medium. "Porn Yesterday" has Harold outraged to discover that the young Albert once starred in a "What the Butler Saw" feature. "And So to Bed" has Harold buying a waterbed to impress a new "bird" and having his romantic hopes literally punctured by his old man. The wonderful "Upstairs Downstairs, Upstairs, Downstairs" has the put-upon Harold getting the better of his dad for once when he discovers that the "perpendicular ponce" is feigning a back injury to keep Harold at his beck and call and plans an excruciating revenge--a bed bath. There's only one shortcoming: completists would prefer these old episodes to be issued chronologically and in full rather than in selective "Best of" compilations. On the DVD: The Very Best of Steptoe and Son episodes are presented in the format in which they were originally shown and all hold up well without any great efforts at enhancement. There are no extras. --David Stubbs