Best comedies and dramas on DVD for summer

This has been the summer of our discontent, when the weather and television programmers have let us down. Stuck at home on a drizzly summer day — and weren't we all? — then you might have looked to television for a midday movie or some other entertaining diversion. But you would have been disappointed.

And that is why God invented DVDs. Here we offer the 10 best television programmes available on DVD, shows which will stand repeat plays — ad-free — when drizzle trickles down the windows.

THE SOPRANOS

The first four seasons are all out there in separate box sets. Yes, the language is profane and it can be a little uncomfortable to realise you still like Tony even after he's whacked Big Pussy. But as a sustained piece of cinema on the small screen this character-driven, relentlessly dark series is without equal.

It is also populated with sad characters like restaurateur Artie Bucco and some of Tony's screwed-up girlfriends, nasty pathological types like Paulie and Ralph, and one of the most cynical, ruthless and conniving characters ever to appear on screen, Tony's lapsed-hippie sister Janice. Or was that his mother?

Watch these people and be amazed by a series which invites you in for pasta and zucchini and then subtly drags you down to the dark side.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

That someone is even considering a remake of this classic of British television is absurd. What are they going to do? Make it more faithful to the book? (Impossible.) Put a new spin on it? (How, and why?) Or just makes fools of themselves? (Highly likely.)

The lavish and leisurely BBC epic about the decline of aristocracy, morals and willpower starring Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews and thesp-celebs like John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, is a slowly enthralling gem which has the advantage of great story (by Evelyn Waugh), wonderful set pieces in castles, gardens and at Oxford, and tragedy lurking just beneath the veneer of sophistication, education, class, manners and sexuality.

A series which never compromises the art or source material, and treats its audience like an adult. Right down to the cruel and jaded end.

CHEERS

Where you know everyone's name. This was sitcom as it should be written. As M*A*S*H descended into sentimentality and predictability, Cheers brought real cynics to the screen in characters like Norm, and life's losers like the know-all postman Cliff.

The pivotal character barman Sam is a former ballplayer and alcoholic (which gives depth to his otherwise strutting-peacock persona) whose Boston pub is the hub of this increasingly witty series. Polished and quick writing was the hallmark of Cheers and it's a toss-up which was the best series: some say the first with brain-addled Coach; others prefer season four when Woody (Woody Harrelson) arrived as the unsophisticated country boy behind the taps.

The first three are available, the fourth in a month. For our money, however, Cheers reached a peak later when Frasier Crane and his nemesis/wife Lilith were sparking off each other, but we'll just have to wait for that. Meantime get hooked right from the start with rapid-fire writing like:
"Norm, how's life?"
"Not for the squeamish."

KNOWING ME, KNOWING YOU and I'M ALAN PARTRIDGE

There were few more cringe-inducing characters than the gauche and obnoxious British television talk show host Partridge (Steve Coogan) whose Abba-themed show offered appalling puns, maltreatment of guests, bad sweaters and even worse jokes.

He was fired for killing a guest, so after that he was off to Radio Norwich for the dawn shift for two series of I'm Alan Partridge. Coogan then smartly pulled the plug on this remarkable comic invention, although in many of his sub-sequent movies he has seemed inseparable from Partridge's mannerisms. Have a blanket nearby to pull over your head when he interviews the guy in the wheelchair.

FAWLTY TOWERS

This perfectly formed comedy still gets repeat play to delighted audiences which confirms its status as a television classic. In Basil Fawlty — purportedly based on a hotel owner John Cleese met in New Zealand — we have one of the most arrogant, cloying, snivelling and distasteful characters ever to appear on the small screen. Basil is so transparent he is quite without guile so we can actually like him. Well, not really.

THE OFFICE

Like Coogan and Cleese, Ricky Gervais brought to television a character so uncomfortable to watch you couldn't look away. David Brent, that boss-cum-chilled-out entertainer, is nasty, self-serving, patronising and arrogant, but also compelling to watch as he preens his ego and plays up to the mockumentary style of the programme.

As his jokes fall flat and he embarrasses himself without shame the camera becomes the cruel observer. Yet the humour was also broad (Brent's turn as singer-songwriter during the training day), and the characters around the edges (notably the relationship between Dawn and Tim, with the boorish Lee off to the side) were also finely drawn.

And was there ever a more tragic figure than Gareth? The two brilliant series and the double-episode Christmas special are available separately, but will soon be released in a box set.

BLACKADDER

Rowan Atkinson may have made more money out of Mr Bean but it was the cruel wit of Ben Elton, Richard Curtis and Atkinson (somewhat straining for effect at times) which elevated his characters in these four time-separated series about various Blackadders.

You need to see them all, but our money is on the second series, although the final episode set in the trenches of World War I proved comedy could also underscore the futility of war with genuine pathos.

THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW

With Garry Shandling as the self-centred, neurotic talkshow host this was incisive comedy. The guest list included Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Peter Falk, Billy Crystal and Richard Simmons, often playing some variant of themselves.

And that was just in the first 13-episode series now available. As it slipped between the show itself and the backstage action with his foul-mouthed, hard-bitten producer Artie (Rip Torn in the role of his career) and insecure sidekick Hank (Jeffrey Tambour), this was a television series which ate its young.

A brilliant cast (Janeane Garofalo as Garry's reliable and cynical secretary Beverly) and a cruel expose of television and its fragile egos. You won't be able to watch the Tonight Show or Mike King ever again.

THE AVENGERS

It ran too long and lost its impact with a revolving door of women companions for John Steed, but the series with Diana Rigg as the cool and unflustered Mrs Peel is a real gem of ever-so British manners and eccentricity, bizarre plots, cheap but effective sets, and villains sketched with all the refinement of a child's crayon drawing.

At times it is also set in stately homes or a London conspicuously free of people and traffic. Great theme music, terrific clothes, umbrellas and bowlers, classic cars, and just plain silly storylines which veer between the surreal and self-parody. One dimensional fun.

ANGELS IN AMERICA

By the time you've got through our previous suggestions, this six-hour mini-series about Aids will be in stores ( from February 16). It was notable for drawing big-screen stars like Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson into the more intimate world of television.

This dramatic and moving series by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kusher mixes magic realism with gritty characterisation in a dramatic tour de force of politics and complex story-telling which transcends its period (Regan's America) and makes for enthralling television.