Entertainment In Focus

05 December 2008 03:58 BST

TV releases on DVD

We look at this week's TV releases on DVD, including Peep Show, House and Doctor Who.

The El Dude Brothers are back this week as the fourth series of Peep Show hits the DVD shelves.

With Mark's (David Mitchell) wedding to Sophie (Olivia Colman) growing terrifyingly nearer, he and Jeremy (Robert Webb) fight to save their uniquely dysfunctional relationship against the impending threat of adulthood and responsibility.

Kicking off with an hilarious first episode involving adultery, arson and Mark being a colossal wimp, and exploring an angry lapdance, "going feral" and a worrying new definition of handyman, it's a consistently cringeworthy, beautifully observed fourth series to one of British comedy's brightest lights.

Watch out for the most depressing wedding you'll ever see.

Click here to see Jez revealing his plans for a stag weekend to remember – on a canal boat.

Click here to watch Jez and Mark plotting to get rid of their (very nice) gym instructor, Matt.

And click here to take the Peep Show challenge - watch a clip from series four and guess what happens next.

Though he's given producers a fright this week by jetting back to London, Hugh Laurie's back as crabby quack House in the third series of the medical drama that also thinks it's a detective show.

Like CSI set in a hospital, it's formulaic but fun, with innovative ailments thrown at Doctor House and team by the week as well as the puzzling fact that Jesse Spencer appears not to have aged a day since leaving Ramsay Street.

Expect stubbly humour and startling gore from a compelling and critically-acclaimed series.

Another doctor's in the house this week, as the Time Lord himself returns for the third season of the revived Doctor Who.

With David Tennant still pining for Rose but teamed up with spunky new assistant Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), it's everything you want from Doctor Who; clever plots, cracking comedy, genuine thrills and a dynamic to appeal to all ages.

Dean Lennox Kelly impresses as Shakespeare in the series' second episode, while John Simm chews scenery to unforgettable effect as The Master.

Meanwhile, things get increasingly silly on Wisteria Lane, as Desperate Housewives also reaches its third season.

Bree (Marcia Cross) marries a possible murderer (Kyle MacLachlan), Mike (James Denton) is stuck in a coma and Dougray Scott pulls out the worst English accent in living memory. It's worse than Dick Van Dyke.

A disappointing effort from a once-refreshing series now firmly lodged in the realms of self-parody.

Renowned historian Michael Wood takes a step away from his usual Trojan haunts to present The Story of India, a fascinating approach to a nation whose history is inextricably tied to our own.

But TV DVD of the week could only go to one release this week; the second series of the brilliant Meerkat Manor.

Bill Nighy's the perfect narrator for this amazingly absorbing show, a wildlife soap opera with rivalries, relationship troubles and, in this series, an enemy Meerkat family, led by the one-eyed Hannibal.

So successful has the series been that the BBC's Natural History unit is now producing a full-length feature film based on the show - think March of the Penguins but in the Kalahari desert.