Fair City 2016 - Disc 1

Fair City

Great British Railway Journeys - Disc 9

Michael Portillo has taken to the tracks again. As the British railway system developed in the early 19th century, suddenly not only goods but people as well had the opportunity to travel great distances with relative ease and comfort. For the general public the question was where did the trains go? And when? And what was at the other end and along the way? Into that void stepped George Bradshaw who began publishing comprehensive guide books with not only details of all the rail lines, stops, and timetables, but a description of what one might find at the stops along the way, helping to create a tourist industry. People traveling just for the sake of seeing what was out there. Using a circa-1850's guide book, Portillo explores how the rail system impacted life and culture and how the places remain today. This program is really a travelogue that uses the rail system between stops at interesting places.  

Great British Railway Journeys

Smorg 107

Donovan Quick

Sword Of Honour

The Best Man

The Brides In The Bath

Home Again + Life As We Know It

Mark the Car Guy has been digging up some good finds. 

Home Again is a comedy from 2006 starring Peter Egan (Big Breadwinner Hog, Lillie, Paradise Postponed, Ever Decreasing Circles, Joint Account, Unforgotten, Downton Abbey), Sinéad Cusack (Oliver's Travels, North & South, The Deep, Camelot, Jekyll & Hyde), Samantha Womack (Demob, Pie in the Sky, Game On, Babes in the Wood, Mount Pleasant, EastEnders), Bruce Mackinnon (Catherine Tate Show, Jekyll, Taking the Flak, Big Top, You Me & The Apocalypse). 
Home Again

Life As We Know It is a comedy from 2001 starring Richard Wilson and Stephanie Cole as a couple. It's not the greatest quality, but it is watchable, especially if you enjoy the work of the two stars. It was written by Michael Aitkens who also wrote Waiting For God, A Perfect State, Class Act, The River, Bust, Honey For Tea and nine episodes of Midsomer Murders. The last episode is cut about 45 seconds before the end. The 3rd episode features one of the first TV roles (outside of comedy sketch shows) for Olivia Colman.
Life As We Know It

Would I Lie To You - Series 8 & 9

Would I Lie To You

Hinterland - Disc 2

Welsh-language crime drama Y Gwyll returned for a second series back in September. The four new stories were aired in 45-minute two-part episodes over eight weeks. Back around Christmas its English-language version, Hinterland, began airing on BBC One Wales. Rather than spread it out over two weeks, each feature-length episode was aired in a single night with the first hour being "Part 1" and ending with a preview of what was coming up "after the news". The network then broke for a news program followed by a 30-minute "Part 2" which began with a "previously in Part 1" segment followed by the opening title segment again. What I did was combine the two parts into one and edit out the "after the news" preview, "previously in Part 1" and second run through of the opening, leaving four 90-minute episodes plus the New Years Day 2015 90-minute special episode. Just pointing that out before receiving the first email telling me there are 8 episodes and I'm missing half of them.

Hinterland

Endeavour

Endeavour returned for a third series of four new feature-length episodes. 

Endeavour

Still Open All Hours

For the third straight year, Still Open All Hours returned to TV on Boxing Day. Last year I think I wrote something about the show having an excellent large cast but they didn't seem to know what to do with them and that Maggie Ollerenshaw and Brigit Forsyth seemed to have good chemistry that should be better utilized. I don't think any changes were made there, but overall the scripts seemed to be more finely tuned. It's very nice to sit back and watch good actors do classic comedy. There's not much of it about these days. Geoffrey Whitehead was added to the cast this series. He also appeared with David Jason in the other show on the disc, The Royal Bodyguard. Hopefully this will return for a 4th straight Boxing Day 11th months from tonight and Roy Clarke will keep writing it. Roy celebrates his 86th birthday on Thursday. 

Still Open All Hours

Unforgettable - Disc 5

Unforgettable

new shipping rates

EU + DOWN UNDER

1 to 12 discs.....$14

13 to 30 discs.....$23

CANADA

1 to 12 discs.....$10

13 to 30 discs.....$16

USA

$7 Priority Mail flat rate 

The Blacklist - Disc 5

The Blacklist

Hank Zipzer

Based on the series of books co-written by Henry Winkler. Adult stars include Neil Fitzmaurice (Phoenix Nights, Eyes Down, Mount Pleasant, Peep Show), Felicity Montagu (ffizz, Wish Me Luck, Health & Efficiency, I'm Alan Partridge, Nighty Night, Suburban Shootout, Doc Martin, Mapp & Lucia {2014}), Juliet Cowan (Pulling, Sarah Jane Adventures), Nick Mohammed (Reggie Perrin, Gates, The Job Lot, Drifters), Javone Prince (PhoneShop, Angelo's), and 70's icon The Fonz himself, Henry Winkler. Other people pop up in this: Nigel Planer......Dominic Coleman....Maggie O'Neill.
A third series will air this summer. This is probably more mature than Bad Education, and not as dumbed-down as that.

Hank Zipzer

Father Brown - Disc 4

Father Brown

American Horror Story - Season 5 Hotel

American Horror Story

Blind Men + Bloomin' Marvellous + My Dead Dad

Three UK sitcom rarities from the 90's. 

Blind Men with Jeremy Swift (Downton Abbey, Foyle's War, The Crimson Field, The Smoking Room, Next Of Kin), Sophie Thompson (Jericho {airing now}, Detectorists, Lightfields, Big Top, EastEnders, Nelson's Column), Jesse Birdsall (Bugs, Eldorado, Footballer's Wives, Hollyoaks), Tamsin Greig (Episodes, Friday Night Dinner, Green Wing, Black Books, Love Soup, White Heat, Diary of Anne Frank, Emma), Raji James (EastEnders, Australian comedy Kick, tonight's episode of Silent Witness).  

Bloomin' Marvellous with Sarah Lancashire (Happy Valley, Last Tango In Halifax, All The Small Things, Rose and Maloney, Chambers, Clocking Off, Where The Heart Is), Clive Mantle (Mount Pleasant, White Van Man, Casualty/Holby City), Kathryn Hunt (Hebburn, Coronation Street, Fat Friends, Where The Heart Is), Shirley Stelfox (Emmerdale, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, Common As Muck, Keeping Up Appearances, Making Out).

My Dead Dad, Scottish sitcom with Forbes Masson (in the recent series of Catastrophe), Roy Hanlon (Taking Over The Asylum), Debra Gillett (Cranford).

Specials

I knew I'd screw this up somehow. I forgot about the Murdoch Mysteries special. Poor Murdoch. It seems that people either love or hate that show. There's no middle ground or fence-sitters, but I try to keep everyone happy so now I have to re-code everything to squeeze them all onto one disc. For those of you that already requested this disc, fear not. I had to rip open a couple of packages, but you'll get the updated disc. I'll send the Murdoch-less discs out to Tucson Tim, who won't miss Murdoch at all.

Red Rock - Disc 3

Red Rock keeps rolling along. The very limited information that's been available kept indicating that there would be 80 episodes in the first series, split 44 / 36, but I now see that the 81st and 82nd episodes are scheduled to air this week. I made the episode 45 -80 files about 250 MB so that they would fit onto two discs while maintaining a 720 X 400 resolution and using a decent quality bit rate, but having no idea what is planned by TV3 for this makes it difficult for me. Hopefully it won't be going on hiatus after several more episodes. We'll just have to wait and see. 

35 Diwrnod {35 Days}

Welsh language crime drama. Each series follows a single story with a similar pattern by opening with the discovery of a body. Then the story jumps back 35 days to set the situation and characters and then moves forward through the 35 days and concluding by arriving back to the opening scene and revealing the killer.

35 Diwrnod

Step aside Scandinavian thrillers, here comes Wales!

Emmerdale 2015 - Disc 10