Ominous music fills the room. Blood seeps down a stopped clock. Got your attention? Good, because the DVD compilation of a deliciously warped British television series is just beginning. You're out of danger, in the comfort of your own home. So reach for the popcorn and enjoy.

The first episode of six in Time For Murder, Acorn Media's dual-DVD boxed collection, is "Bright Smiler." It's also the best episode of the series. It stayed with me, going round my thoughts long after I had put the disc cases back into the handsome cardboard sleeve — decorated photographically with the maniacal masseuse, Sonja.

And so the collection begins - after the dripping, stopped clock which appears between each episode and on the selection screen. We are about to meet 'Bright Smiler'. We see a writer check into the Bolton Hall 'Health Hydro' (spa). She hopes for a respite from the pressures of her daily life. The writer, who one can't help but think was modeled after this episode's scribe Fay Weldon (we even see her open a Fay Weldon paperback novel), is at the end of her tether after a job-for-money in crass Hollywood. She isn't to find the rest she craves, however. A creepily cheerful health spa employee has an agenda all her own.

Jane Asher is memorably unsettling in the titular role. 'Bright smiler' Sonja is instantly recognisable - a woman, says the writer/narrator character, who has fallen on hard times life never prepared her for. Sonja is one of those unfortunate souls who answer heartache by denying it exists. The instant a cross or depressing thought occurs to her, she wipes it out of mind with a 'bright smile' eerie in its insincerity. Bluntly put, she gives everyone around her the creeps.

The rest-seeking writer struggles between feelings of compassion and disgust as "Bright Smiler's" story unfolds. And here Weldon's banner-waving is clear: women who give everything up for a man end up with nothing. In the end, we are left unsure whether to sympathise with Sonja or feel bewildered at the writer's superficial decisions. The sword of Damocles hangs over a taut chain of ethical decisions and it never does drop. "No one blames anyone any more, did you notice?" Sonja asks at one point. Yes, I have - and it's to Weldon's credit that the teleplay leaves us with a moral dilemma we can't easily dismiss. It goes beyond 'blame' and straight to the heart of actual responsibility. Are we responsible for others? Or is it more convenient to ignore and go our merry way? Are we each others' keeper, or is it our right to be left alone and not bothered? "Bright Smiler" leaves us to devise our own answers, to reckon with our own conscience or lack thereof, and in so doing, packs a powerful punch.

What of the series overall? On the superficial, technical side, this is video from 1985 - the series ran from November to December that year on ITV - and it looks it. The 'video on soundstage' element is obvious. The lighting is a bit too bright and flat, the colors muted; the sound echoes at times, while becoming muddy in the lower registers. The sometimes unintelligible dialogue was less of a problem on my newer TV/DVD than when played on my beloved old clunker of a television. Still, other DVDs did not have an audio problem on the same equipment, so I think the fault lies in the original videotape recording, not the equipment the DVD played upon and not the DVD transfer itself. It crept close to annoying at times, but the series pulled me in more than the technical problems put me off. Still, I feel compelled to add that subtitles would have been a very, very welcome addition to this box set.