Shelley: The Complete Series 1 to 6 DVD – Garfield Morgan, Belinda Sinclair

All the episodes from the first to the sixth series of the British comedy starring Hywel Bennett as James Shelley, the depressed drifter who courts calamity. Despite being highly educated, he is unemployed and has no intention of working, and lives with his girlfriend Fran (Belinda Sinclair) in a bedsit at the home of Mrs H (Josephine Tewson). The series follows his misadventures as he ducks, dodges and tries as hard as possible to avoid getting caught up in Thatcher’s Britain. Series 1 episodes are: ‘Moving In’, ‘The Nelson Touch’, ‘Gainfully Employed’ and ‘The Distaff Side’. Series 2 episodes are: ‘Elders and Betters’, ‘May the Best Man Win’, ‘Nowt So Queer’, ‘Owner Occupiers’, ‘Expletive Deleted’, ‘Tea and Sympathy’, ‘Hearth and Home’, ‘Fully Furnished’ and ‘Dearly Beloved’. Series 3 episodes are: ‘Christmas With Shelley’, ‘Of Mice and Men’, ‘Signing On’, ‘Nor Iron Bars a Cage’, ‘Foreign Affairs’, ‘Universal Trust’, ‘Dry Rot’ and ‘You Have to Laugh’. Series 4 episodes are: ‘Unkindest Cuts’, ‘A Drop of the Pink Stuff’, ‘No News Is Good…’, ‘Credit Where Credit’s Due’, ‘Mortal Coils’ and ‘Slaughterhouse Sling’. Series 5 episodes are: ‘On the Road to Damascus’, ‘Brave New World’, ‘Shelley Vs Shelley’, ‘Noises Off’, ‘Tubes Help You Breed Less Easily’ and ‘When the Chip Hits the Fan’. Series 6 episodes are: ‘Dry Dreams’, ‘It Nearly Always Happens to Somebody Else’, ‘Of Cabbages and Kings’, ‘The Party’, ‘Owed to the Electrician’ and ‘Brief Encounter’.

Hywel Bennett stars as James Shelley: an erudite, highly articulate graduate and bone-idle skiver who spends his days pondering life’s philosophical implications whilst dodging the bureaucratic machinery that has the gall to insist that he actually work for a living. At the series’ outset he shares a little North London bedsit with girlfriend Fran, but his life of reflective slothfulness comes increasingly under threat from the attentions of the labour exchange and the pressing realities of fatherhood, home-ownership, marriage and divorce A huge success for ITV, running for a total of ten series over thirteen years, Shelley features a masterful performance by Bennett with regular appearances by Warren Clarke and Garfield Morgan, and guest turns from Kenneth Cope, Alan Rickman, Leslie Ash, Fulton MacKay and James Grout, among many others. This set contains every episode of the initial run of six series, including the 1980 Christmas Special.