The Saint: The Complete Colour Series

This DVD boxset features the first 47 episodes (series 3 and 4) of The Saint in colour. The picture quality is as one would expect of a TV show of its vintage. Whilst there are plenty of scratches on the print, viewing is never disrupted. The audio quality is similarly acceptable. Sadly, there are no subtitles.

The Saint is very much a fan's boxset, and rightly so. It's not as if anyone will pick up a whipping 14 disc set on the off-chance, so why not pack it with anything a geeky fanboy could ever want?

Most people won't want to sit through 20 minutes of photos, with The Saint theme tune playing over the top, but some people will. Putting trailers for every episode on the discs and allowing them to be watched with English or American audio might seem excessive, but it's certainly giving the devoted fan a good run for his (or her.... no, it'd be his, wouldn't it?) buck. Old newsreel footage of Princess Muna visiting the set? Whack that on, too. The producers know their audience and have given them what they want.

The main "normal" extra is the very well-hidden commentary on the Ex-King Of Diamonds episiode. It's an amalgam of commentaries from Roger Moore, Johnny Goodman, Alvin Rakoff and Robert S Baker, some of whom can't even rememeber what their job titles were. As you might expect, it becomes a roll call of who's dead and who isn't. The highlight? "I may have directed it, but I can't remember this scene at all." Oh please, tell us more. Such a shame there weren't commentaries on the other 48 episodes!

There is also a 40-minute documentary, entitled The Saint Steps In... To Colour. There are many better documentaries on DVDs, but there are also many far worse. No one will rush to watch it more than once, but it's nice that it's there.

Six per cent of profits (approximately £1.70 per boxset) goes to a medical aid charity in Africa. A very noble cause.

Unless you've been counting down the days until these DVDs are released, you'd be better off bunging a fiver in the poor box and watching old repeats of shows on ITV3 when you feel in the mood.