The Bridge Trilogy (15)

Arrow Films, £34.99

If you were lucky enough to have watched Sky Atlantic's Anglo-French cop thriller The Tunnel without having seen the Swedish-Danish drama it's based on, then this is the Christmas boxset for you.

Series three of The Bridge has just finished on BBC Four but in putting it together with seasons one and two this collection proves that in lead character Saga Noren we have a female protagonist every bit as memorable and culturally significant as Sarah Lund, the sour-faced, woolly jumper-wearing star of The Killing. And if that was the show which turned Scandinavian Noir into a staple of British television schedules, this is the one which proves the run of form isn't over yet.

As with The Killing, which only managed one absolutely gripping storyline, the serial killer plots of The Bridge aren't particularly memorable or even easy to follow. But what gives the show its heft is the performance by Swedish actress Sofia Helin as Malmo detective Saga Noren, a socially-awkward workaholic with a troubled family background, a fantastically cool car and - thanks to a condition which is probably Asperger Syndrome, though it's never actually stated - a knack for saying and doing the wrong things at the wrong time. Or the right thing at the right time if you're the stranger she has just propositioned in a singles bar.

In series one and two, Malmo-based Noren is teamed with amiable Copenhagen detective Martin Rohde (the excellent Kim Bodnia). It's a classic odd couple pairing. With Rohde gone, she winds up instead with Henrik Saboe (Thure Lindhardt), a man whose wife and children disappeared six years earlier but who still sees and talks to them. Suddenly Noren has a partner with similar issues to her. When she propositions him, he says yes.

By the by, season two of The Tunnel airs on Sky early next year (Stephen Dillane and Clemence Poesy star) and though we haven't seen it in this country yet, the Americans have made their own version with a US-Mexico setting featuring Diane Kruger in the distaff role. Nobody does it like wide-eyed Sofia Helin, though.

What Have You Done To Solange? (18)

Arrow Video, £24.99

Directed by Massimo Dallamano, Sergio Leone's cinematographer on A Fistful Of Dollars, this stylish 1972 film is a prime example of “giallo”, the name given to the genre of Italian crime thrillers which flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. Giallo trademarks include gratuitous nudity, a black-gloved serial killer, a vaguely supernatural undertow and a soundtrack by Italian prog-rock band Goblins. Dallamano's work has three of the four - the great Ennio Morricone provided the score - and is the first in a loose trilogy of films with the salacious title “Schoolgirls In Peril”.

The girls in question here are pupils at a single sex Catholic school in London. One of them, Elizabeth, is having an affair with hunky (but married) Italian game teacher Enrico Rosseni (Fabio Testi). As Elizabeth's classmates are picked off one by one by a sex killer with a rather gruesome modus operandi, Enrico swaps his open-to-the-navel tracksuit for a truly hideous suede coat and takes it upon himself to solve the case.

It's better than it sounds, though among the extras is a revealing interview with acclaimed German actress Karin Baal, who plays Enrico's wife Herta. “Squalid porn” is how she describes the film. But it does have its fans: compare Dallamano's girl-on-a-bike opening credits with the same sequence in Peter Strickland's The Duke Of Burgundy and the homage is clear.

The Cobbler (12)

Entertainment One, £9.99

On paper, director Tom McCarthy has a pretty decent resume, as they call CVs in his American homeland. He announced himself with 2003's The Station Agent (and gave a first lead role to future Game Of Thrones star Peter Dinklage) and his follow-up, 2008's The Visitor, featured the great Palestinian actress Hiyam Abbass, star of critically-acclaimed films like Paradise Now and The Lemon Tree. McCarthy also wrote the screenplay for 2009 Pixar smash-hit Up.

That winning streak ends here with this lame body-swap/crime caper comedy. Adam Sandler plays Max, a fourth generation Jewish cobbler in New York who discovers a magic “stitcher” in the basement that allows him to mend shoes and then "become" their owner. We hear about the contraption's back history in an opening scene from 1903 featuring Max's great-great grandfather and his cobbler friends. Cue a present-day plot involving a thuggish black gangster (played by Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man), a vicious property developer (Ellen Barkin) and a plucky local campaigner trying to stop the destruction of the neighbourhood (Melonie Diaz). There's an important cameo appearance from Dustin Hoffman and, though Sandler tries manfully, the scene-stealing performance comes from Steve Buscemi as Max's irascible neighbour Jimmy.

The Cobbler finished top of one publication's Worst Films of 2015 list - yes, even ahead of Human Centipede III - but that won't be McCarthy's biggest regret. It will be the fact that he's given his film a title which allows critics like me to end reviews with phrases like this: “A load of old cobblers”.