Anglophiles will love Midsomer Murders, a quirky and immensely enjoyable mystery series from author Caroline Graham featuring the wry, dry-witted Chief Inspector Barnaby. Set in the English countryside, the show is populated by eccentric billionaires, burned-out artists - and lots of killers. Acorn's 19-disc Midsomer Murders, The Early Cases Collection (http://acornonline.com.; $159.99; not rated), due out March 25, includes 18 feature-film-length episodes from the show's first five seasons.
The five-hour miniseries Sorrell and Son from Koch Vision (www.kochvision.com; $29.98; not rated) is a faithful adaptation of English novelist Warwick Deeping's heartrending 1925 story about the trials and tribulations of a working class man who sacrifices his dignity, his health and his sanity to provide for his son after the boy's mother runs away.
Koch's racy, adult-only British mini-series, Strictly Confidential ($29.98; not rated), stars Suranne Jones as a police-detective-turned-sex-therapist who runs a marriage counseling practice with her husband's married brother - whom she fancies. This is a smart, but dark, modern fairy tale about marriage, sex - and murder.
The Criterion Collection has released a four-disc edition of The Last Emperor (www.criterion.com; $59.95; PG-13), Bernardo Bertolucci's magisterial 1987 epic about the life of Chinese Emperor Pu Yi, who took the throne at age 3 in 1908.
Also from Criterion comes 1966's The Naked Prey ($39.95; not rated) from Cornel Wilde. A disturbing study of human violence, the film is about an African tribe in the 19th century who captures a group of colonialists only to release them back into the jungle - so they can hunt them for fun.
