Big Bad World + Stanley And The Women

What was that stuff we used back in the 90's called? Video tape? Well here are two more dramas that would probably be lost if not for those old VCR's.

Big Bad World ran for 3 series and a total of 16 episodes. Here is Series 1. With Ardal O'Hanlon (Father Ted, Hero, Blessed), Emma Fielding (Cranford), Beth Goddard (Eustace Brothers, Gimme Gimme Gimme, Preston Front, Sunnyside Farm). Here's a review I found online:
Drama about the problems of a group of middle-class, middle-income thirtysomething friends, a married couple and their two single chums, who are struggling with lives and loves as they face the prospect of reaching the forties without achiving anything.
As I remember, the first series of this was well-cast and good humoured, more immediate than 'Cold Feet', and with less soap-opera situations. Emma Fielding and Steve Nicolson were particularly good, and even Ardal O'Hanlan showed a bit of range.The second series was horribly sentimental. Most of the cast were replaced by worse-looking, worse actors. All responsible should never work in television ever again. But they probably don't, because it's a fickle industry.The funniest episode had a German getting high on the herb and vapourising cows with a shotgun. I remember it well.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202183/

Stanley And The Woman starred the late John Thaw (where do I begin?) with Michael Aldridge (Last of the Summer Wine, Charters & Caldicott, Spyship, Love in a Cold Climate, Love For Lydia), Michael Elphick (Boon, Three Up Two Down) and a bunch of others. Found this online:
Based on the novel by Kingsley Amis. John Thaw gives a mesmerising performance as Stanley Duke, who discovers that his son has schizophrenia, a spirited performance from Samuel West. He then realises that he has been used by Dr Trish Collings as an experiment for her new book. Collings is played nastily by Geraldine James, who was also in Morse and Kavanagh. Penny Downie does well also as Susan, and Shiela Gish is laugh out loud funny as Stanley's first wife. And I mustn't forget the men, Michael Elphick and Alun Armstrong were standouts, but Donald Churchill and Michael Aldridge (who died 3 years later) did respectively. All in all, a funny, moving and quite shocking insight in the life of a schizophrenic's family. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168379/