Shelley: The Complete Series 7 to 10 DVD – Stephen Hoye, Hywel Bennett

All the episodes from the seventh to the tenth 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 7 episodes are: ‘The Return of Shelley’, ‘In God We Trust’, ‘Emergency Ward 9’, ‘One of Those Nights’, ‘Why Me? and ‘The Big S’. Series 8 episodes are: ‘The Artful Lodger’, ‘Shelley Washes Whiter’, ‘A Happy Event’, ‘Born Freeish’, ‘Day of the Reptile’, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, ‘The Gospel According to Shelley’, ‘Wages of Virtue’, ‘It’s Only a Game’, ‘Killer Driller’, ‘Cold Turkey’, ‘A Problem Aired’ and ‘Help!’. Series 9 episodes are: ‘A Trial Period’, ‘A Question of Attitude’, ‘Golden Oldies’, ‘The Bug’, ‘Second Best Man’ and ‘ Brainstrain’. Series 10 episodes are: ‘The Deep End’, ‘Come Fly With Me’, ‘Love Is…’, ‘A Little Learning’, ‘Happy Birthday RIP’ and ‘Accountants and Zulus’.

Returning from a near-five-year hiatus, Hywel Bennett stars once again as James Shelley, the erudite, philosophically inclined idler who elevated work-avoidance to an art form through its initial. massively popular six series run in the early 1980s. These further series (initially titled The Return of Shelley) see the graduate and ‘freelance layabout’ returning to the UK after a stint teaching English abroad. When he left, the social landscape was changing fast and now he’s shocked to see by how much. Middle-aged slobs have been banned from their origins, Yuppiedom is the name of the new game, and the only thing that’s real is estate; an unforgiving new world personified by Shelley’s frighteningly energetic new landlords, Carol and Graham… Featuring guest appearances from James Grout, Sean Gilder, Stephen Tompkinson, Clive Swift and Alex Jennings among many others, this set contains every episode screened between 1988 and 1992, including the 1991 New Year special.