Thomas and Friends Series 4 and 5 - The Memorable TV DVD Review

You definitely have to applaud Roadshow for bringing the Thomas stories to DVD in their correct broadcast order, something fans have been wanting for a long time.

Created by the Reverend W.V. Audrey to entertain his children at bedtime back in the 1940's, Thomas is such a huge worldwide phenomenon, mainly thanks to this inimitable series that he known from Peking to Paris (another great series available on DVD from Roadshow incidentally) and whilst there have been many Thomas releases in the past, they have always mixed episodes from the series and its been absolutely fantastic to revisit the series from its very beginnings.

The first set of stories about the mischievous engine Thomas and his pals on the island of Sodor were narrated by former Beatle Ringo Starr and when he didn't commit to further episodes fellow Liverpudlian Michael Angelis was brought in to continue in the same vein.

We are now up to series four and five. Season four which first aired in 1995 this was the final season to include original Audry stories but it is also one of the best series featuring as it does tales of the earliest days of Sodor when trains such as Duke (the oldest engine on the island), Sir Handal (aka Falcon) and Peter Sam (aka Stuart), Skarloey and Rhenius were ruling the roost, these stories are really charming, these engines a lot less cheeky than their newer counterparts.

Season five takes us back fully into the world of Thomas and was the first series to make use of slightly larger narrow gauge model trains. When it started the show was known as Thomas the Tank Engine, somewhere along the way it has become Thomas and Friends, either way these DVD's are a must for any one with pre-schoolers. Each of these DVD's are also great value, running to over 2 hours with 26 episodes on each.

ANY SPECIAL FEATURES?

No extras.