Drama > Parental Guidance Drama > 10 GBP to 15 GBP

Advantages: a classic
Disadvantages: slightly dated

...series of the extremely popular Little House on the Prairie television show, loosely based on the Little House books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The series was nominated for 17 Emmy awards and 3 Golden Globes. Overall the programme tells the story of the Ingalls family, Charles and Caroline with their three girls; Mary, Laura and Carrie, and their lives as pioneers in the 1870's on the American frontier. In each episode the family overcome a ...
...6 discs. The reason that I bought this box set was that I remember watching this series as a child, and although I think some of it is a little dated, the underlying ideas and themes make this a classic. The other series are also available on DVD. ... Read review

Advantages: Beautifully filmed, poetic, magnificently acted masterpiece of cinema rarely matched today
Disadvantages: Nothing... genuinely nothing

I first saw Hotel du Nord as part of a double bill with a film by Jean Renoir (I forget which - though I think the brilliant Le Crime De Monsieur Lange) and I was frankly going to see the Renoir film and thought, hmmm, I'll just have to sit through Hotel du Nord and grin and bear it. Something about the film just really didn't appeal. Then right from the opening shot that tracks down from the bridge over the canal Saint Martin and along the side ...
...of a soft spot for Hotel du Nord. It is firmly placed in the traditional of French cinema of the thirties. Like his contemporaries, Renoir et al, the director Marcel Carne made films that were considered to be part of the poetic-realism (or at least are now known as) movement that was inspired as much by cinema as Carne being a member of a left wing political party heavily influenced by Communism. It is noticeable in the film, as in Renoir's Le Crime ... Read review

Advantages: Excellent close to the series
Disadvantages: The threads set up in previous series a bit weak

...its mainstays in alphabetical order, Dallas redefined the format in which long running drama's played out. Something that most US series' have now adopted and developed, the cliffhanger freezeframes have become synonymous with what Dallas was about. Initially, the show seperated each episode by wrapping up its sub-plots in one episodes, but having firmly established itself as an ongoing series by 1982, Dallas had now spread its many intruiging plots ...
...of the strongest episodes of Dallas I have seen so far. All of the actors, bar the late Jim Davis as Jock Ewing, continued to appear on the show by series 6. Barbara Bel Geddes gets some of her strongest scene's in this series, as she fights her sons to sell Ewing Oil, as well as trying to protect the ailing Sue Ellen from her husband's destruction. She is excellent in the role and, despite the obvious power that was given to the male leads, manages ... Read review

Advantages: To see a modern day take on an English classic
Disadvantages: Requires your full attention at all times.

A truly inspired adaptation of the Dickens classic, which kept my husband and I enthralled from start to finish. The direction of this multi part drama was cleverly constructed to appeal to all ages, including the new generation with its soap opera style approach by culminating each episode with a cliffhanger the viewer is immediately drawn into the next episode. On the plus side we get to enjoy a continuous slice of todays British and overseas acting ... Read review

Advantages: Intimate, lovingly-crafted and superbly detailed
Disadvantages: A little slow for action fans and young children

When the film was made in 1995, Miyazaki was considering giving up directing, and most people inside the studio expected his successor to be Kondo Yoshifumi. However, this was to be his only movie as helmsman before his tragic passing in 1998. Nonetheless, for a movie the world remembers you by, you could certainly do worse than Mimi. Sorry, Hayao, but I have to say that the stories of Ghibli films tend to be strongest when based closely on that ...
...no Buta are amongst the best films the esteemed Studio has ever made, their greatest strengths are decidedly not their storylines. On the other hand, Hotaru no Haka and this film benefit enormously from having really simple yet strong, cohesive storylines to build upon. Shizuku is a normal girl with some talent for translating lyrics from English but no idea what she wants to do with her life. She meets a boy named Seiji, and while they quarrel ... Read review