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Sleepers [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC)


Our Price: £16.74 (subject to change)

Anyone can watch...
Review date: 2008-10-13 Rating: 10 out of 10

I'm not going to add anything to earlier reviews (why bother when I would simply be in agreement) however...

Solely on the basis that the DVD is a US import in the NTSC format Amazon have made the assumption that this is Region 1 coded. NOT SO! I have two DVD players which will not - under any circumstances - play anything other than Region 2 or 0 discs and this set plays on those machines without any problem whatsoever. There is NO indication on either the packaging or the discs of any region coding so the assumption has to be that this set is region-free and capable of being played on any machine with the proviso that both the DVD and the TV can handle NTSC signals.

I have attempted to get Amazon to change the region coding for this set but to no avail.


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Reviews


"Might one enquire, Comrade, what you are doing with a monkey?"
Review date: 2008-02-17 Rating: 10 out of 10

Must completely and utterly concur with my Stafford colleague in lamenting that "Once again we Brits are faced with the objectionable situation whereby the country that produced such excellent television seems incapable of providing its viewers with an example of its wares." Apologies for the verbatim paste, but it NEEDS to be said often until SLEEPERS is available in Region 2 (and Region 4!) format.

Must also completely and utterly agree with our American cousin in Irvine, Ca. on the sheer delightfulness and wonderfulness (and several other descriptions ending in -ness) of this only-ever-once repeated BBC light comedy featuring Nigel Havers and Warren Clarke as 1960s KGB sleeper agents who have been forgotten about by an end-of-the-Cold-War KGB, and have settled into their 'legends' so well that they are now 'more English than the English.' I watched the four episodes on BBC in early 1991 and instantly loved it, completely 'digging' both its humour and its satire - particularly of the Civil Service parsimony governing the two MI5 chaps: eg. when cars roar away, we see MI5 watcher George in a puny Mini Metro which has absolutely no power to keep up with the others! And his superior who, with his plant, is always at odds with "those cretins in boiler maintenance" (best he can do is "fire off a memo"). SLEEPERS was repeated, as two long episodes, later that same year (1991) and I captured them on VHS tape. However, there the story ends in the UK.

Am sure I was not the only one in this country who regularly wrote to the BBC, or wandered into the BBC shop in the town centre, enquiring When oh When?, the BBC - or perhaps even a second party - was going to release SLEEPERS on VHS (and later DVD), and being very disappointed one of those years when the spotty young lad, after consulting some DVD-release compendium or whatever, turned to me and resolutely announced that it is NOT going to be released at all. If he was older I may have smacked him for his smugness.

Have watched my VHS copy several times, but never overdone it, during the later years allowing it to run in one single session so as to minimize tension, pressure, or whatever damage speeds up the normal wear-and-tear process. Have not played it for at least four years as I am afraid to leave parts of the now-ageing tape on the heads. Two efforts to transcribe the tape to my PC's hard-drive for possible encoding onto VCD or DVD have failed; my 1.8GHz CPU is underpowered and cannot hold the datastream (or whatever the tech phrase is), so I sold the two Pinnacle Dazzle devices on on eBay.

And now I see that SLEEPERS has been available in North America's Region 1 NTSC format for nearly a year ... There just is no justice ... [sigh]


5 Stars...if only we could e able to watch it?
Review date: 2008-01-19 Rating: 10 out of 10

Once again we Brits are faced with the objectionable situation whereby the country that produced such excellent television seems incapable of providing its viewers with an example of its wares.
Why must we see items of "crap" TV be released on DVD or video whilst such cherished dramas such as "Sleepers" seem to be forever stored gathering dust and cobwebs in some store cupboard

The Wrong End of the Stick!
Review date: 2007-12-18 Rating: 10 out of 10

This brilliant satire on the post-Cold-War intelligence services of the UK, the USSR, and the USA, who bumble around spending so much time spying on each other that each service wildly misinterprets what the other is actually doing, is not to be missed. The plot may unfold slowly, but it will soon have you laughing out loud. The two KGB sleeper spies left out in the cold of England are Nigel Havers and Warren Clarke. The former, who has taken the capitalistic financial world of London by storm, is thoroughly delightful, and the latter, who has settled down with a wife, three children and a stuffed toy monkey named Morris in a working-class neighborhood in Manchester, is thoroughly lovable. During the previous twenty-five years of their sleeperhood, both spies have become typically and irrevocably English.

Many of the laughs come from the fine supporting cast (whose names Acorn Media, characteristically, has not provided on the DVD case): the two terribly proper MI5 agents, especially the cheese-paring "C" character who demands that his junior officer give a scrupulous account for every pound and pence he has spent on dinner at Burger King; the beauteous all work-and-no-play KGB agent, without an ounce of humor, and the junior spy who loves her but cannot persuade her to go with him to see the latest West-End musical; the spy-master who originally sent the sleepers of the title to England and has meanwhile landed in a Soviet looney bin; the head of the Soviet trade commission (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) with an American accent that is far more convincing than those of the two brash CIA officers, to whom the British refer dryly as their "cousins." The antics of all of them as they squabble over territory keep the laughs coming one after the other.

Underlying the humor is the serious issue of communication (or lack of it) between intelligence agencies; and historical hindsight indicates that some of the misreading----getting "the wrong end of the stick"----by one side about what the other side is doing, is not so far off the mark. As one of the spies remarks in the film, when something is so wildly improbable, it is very likely to be true.

In any event, "Sleepers" is a keeper!

Fab show
Review date: 2007-09-24 Rating: 10 out of 10

This show was fabulous. I own a really old video recording which has deteriorated over the years. When oh when will this be available in Australia (Region 4 or 0). Morris was a very silly Monkey.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Michael Gough
Nigel Havers
David Calder
Joanna Kanska
Warren Clarke

Creators:
Nigel Havers (Primary Contributor)
Warren Clarke (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Acorn Media
Manufacturer: Acorn Media
EAN: 0054961854790
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: Colour, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC,
Release date: 2007-03-27
Universal product code (UPC): 054961854790
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Region code: 1
Running time: 211 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1991
Language: English (Original Language)

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