One of Buffy's strongest selling points was its large cast of supporting characters. The Slayer Collection: Spike gathers together four episodes involving perhaps the most popular of all of these: the cool punk rock vampire who, in the course of the show's run, moves from being one of Buffy's most terrible enemies to her lover and defender. He and his Goth vamp lover Drusilla arrived on the scene in "School Hard" and proceeded to disrupt a PTA meeting at Sunnydale High. Also from the second season we get "Lie to Me", in which a temporary alliance with one of Buffy's most treacherous friends demonstrates the essential fragility of the relationship between Spike and Dru even after a century. He returned briefly in Season 3 in "Lovers Walk", deserted by Dru and desperately flailing around, wrecking most of the show's relationships in a single bout of drunken violence, truth-telling and sharp wit.

By the fifth season, Spike was a very different vampire--with a chip in his brain that stopped him hurting humans and he fell desperately in love with a Buffy, who had not yet learned to trust him; "Fool for Love" was the episode in which we learned Spike's back-story: he was a minor Victorian poet, turned by Drusilla when rejection in love led him down the wrong alley, his entire hyper-aggressive persona is based on a need to hide his sensitivity. Spike was always one of the main focuses of the show's combination of acute wit and passionate romanticism and these four episodes admirably sample what made him so appealing to fans.

On the DVD: The Slayer Collection: Spike also includes a documentary about the history of Spike as a character in which James Marsters talks intelligently about his portrayal of his most famous role. --Roz Kaveney

Buffy was always an ensemble show. The Slayer Collection: Willow showcases the work of one of the central members of the excellent cast. Alison Hannigan's portrayal of the shy, intelligent computer hacker-turned-witch was always one of the show's strongest points--it validated our perception of the heroic Buffy, that she could be so good a friend to someone so unlike her. The four episodes here showcase Willow's emotional life, first with the laconic werewolf Oz, and then with the stammering Tara. Joss Whedon has praised Hannigan as "the Queen of Pain" and these episodes are full of it.

From the show's second season, we get "Phases" the episode in which she first gets seriously involved with Oz, and he discovers his own lycanthropic nature. From its fourth year there is "Wild at Heart", in which Oz is tempted by a girl werewolf, and "New Moon Rising", in which his return, partly cured of the transformations, is complicated by Willow's new feelings for Tara. This last episode includes perhaps television's funniest coming-out scene ever, as Willow has to acknowledge her lesbianism to Buffy. The exception, and perhaps the finest of Hannigan's many fine performance, is "Doppelgangland" in which Willow's resentments and self-doubt are concretised as an alternate-world vampire alter ego; Hannigan not only plays both Willows, but plays them impersonating each other, deliciously.

On the DVD: The Slayer Collection: Willow also includes a discussion of Willow's evolution as a character by Joss Whedon and others of the show's writers, as well as by Alison Hannigan herself. --Roz Kaveney

The one-off special episode where the cast indulge their musical aspirations. Very much fang in cheek, a fun episode in the Buffy canon.

In this unique mobster movie, Scott Baio heads up a prepubescent cast as the title character, a child gangster determined to rule over New York City.