With much of the television that those in single digit ages in the 1970s having disappeared long ago from our screens, memories become just fragments – the titles of what we saw long forgotten, and even in this digital age satellite television does not have a place for them amongst its hundreds of channels.  Thanks to Network DVD, we now have two ‘sampler’ double-disc sets to savour, to help fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

These releases are therefore ideally suited for those now in their forties. No longer do you have to fork out on a series that you may or may not remember correctly.  In these two releases known as “Look-Back on 70s Telly” we get two pools of many unreleased legends to cast our memory net into – “Issue 1” covers the pre-school genre, while “Issue 2” covers that of action and adventure aimed at children and younger teenagers (of the time).  All of it is wrapped in artwork very much a homage to the “Look-In” comic of the era, and a theme tune for the hilarious and well thought-out menus that pays homage to the theme tune to the series Ace of Wands.

Though it was made in 2006, Shinji Higuchi’s disaster movie is surely something of a hot potato at the moment. The recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile weigh heavily on the hearts and minds of the world’s population. Are we ready for fictional tale of terrible death and destruction when the reality of it appears nightly on our news bulletins? That decision will be up to the DVD buying and renting public.

Billed as a Japanese rival to “2012”, “Sinking of Japan” is about just that – the dragging under water of Japan as the tectonic plate it lies on is pulled down by an adjacent plate. The horrendous side effects are city-levelling earth quakes, awesomely destructive tsunamis and possibly even a volcanic eruption from Mount Fuji. Dr Tadokoro (Etsushi Toyokawa) is the scientist who makes this terrifying discovery, following a more minor but still devastating quake beneath Suruga Bay.