Designated Survivor (12)

eOne, £24.99

Whether this hit American political thriller neatly anticipates events or has been entirely gazumped by them is hard to say, but it premiered two months before Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election and presents a fictional White House incumbent every bit as unlikely as the real one America eventually elected.

He is Tom Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland), the man with the defiantly unsexy Housing and Urban Development brief but a cabinet member nonetheless. So unsexy is his position, however, and so insecure his seat in that cabinet that on the night of the presidential State of the Union address to both houses of Congress, he is chosen to be the “designated survivor” – a real procedure, which removes one cabinet member from the assembly in order to ensure a line of succession should anything happen. This being Kiefer Sutherland, something does happen: a bomb explodes in the Capitol building killing everyone, and before you can say “Scramble Air Force One”, a punch-drunk Kirkman has been sworn in as President, much to the disgust of the shocked nation.

The show aired on ABC in the US, which isn't generally a sign of quality given the major networks' risk averse, lowest-common-denominator approach to drama. Nor do the Homeland-meets-House Of Cards comparisons stack up: it's nowhere near as good as either, lacking the strong characterisation and geo-political prescience of the first, and the complex, almost Shakespearean narrative arc of the second. But it's refreshing to see Sutherland playing against type – Tom Kirkman is about as far from 24's Jack Bauer as it's possible to go – and there's plenty in this 21 episode, six disc set to see fans of political drama through the autumn. Among Sutherland's co-stars are X-Men's Adan Canto, Mission: Impossible III star Maggie Q (as dogged FBI investigator Hannah Wells) and, because you always need a Brit in these things, Natascha McElhone as Kirkman's lawyer wife Alex.

Endless Summer (U)

Second Sight, £8.99

Received wisdom says it was the theatrical success of 1994 film Hoop Dreams which really made the documentary form a cinematic proposition. But three decades earlier, director Bruce Brown had brought crowds to movie theatres across America to thrill at his irreverent and atmospheric 1966 surf documentary, Endless Summer, still a seminal work and referenced in everything from The Big Wednesday to Point Break.

The film follows Californian surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August on a journey they made in late 1963, taking off in search of the “endless summer” of the title and travelling from the US to first Senegal, then Ghana, then South Africa to seek out isolated beaches and the perfect wave. At Cape St Francis, on the road to Durban, they find it. From there, the focus shifts to Australia – including a stint on Bells Beach in Victoria, where the climactic final scene of Point Break is set – and from there to New Zealand and Tahiti, with Brown inter-cutting his on-the-road footage with scenes from Hawaii or back home in California. His narration is glib, wry, funny and often peppered with surfer slang or 1960s hipster speak.

To modern viewers, aspects of the narration in the African section of the film will jar. There's constant talk of “natives”, conditions are described as “primitive”, there are jokes about cannibals and one of the surfers even blacks up briefly. There is – perhaps – a heavily veiled reference to apartheid when Brown mentions sharks and porpoises being segregated in the waters near Durban, but other than that the politics of race are ignored. Still, the photography and scenery are amazing and in every other aspect Brown's film is deserving of its reputation. Interviews include an interview with the director, himself a keen surfer, as well as several featurettes about the making of Endless Summer.

See No Evil (15)

Indicator, £16.99

Released in dual format under Powerhouse Films' Indicator re-issue strand, this 1971 curio was written by Brian Clemens of Avengers fame, helmed by veteran American director Richard Fleischer (best known for 1970s sci-fi thriller Soylent Green) and shot in a rural Berkshire peopled by gypsies, horse breeders, Manor House-dwelling country types and a cowboy boot-wearing killer seen only from the knee down. Into the middle of all this, and three years on from her success in Rosemary's Baby, comes willowy Mia Farrow as a niece of the country types who was blinded by a fall from a horse and is now slowly putting her life together. When aunt, uncle and niece are bumped off by our killer, she wanders through a house filled with dead bodies until she finally realises she's next. Farrow's great as the blind and fragile heroine, and there's plenty of that very English oddness which Clemens brought to both the Avengers and The Avengers. A cult item in the making, perhaps.

See No Evil was released in the UK as Blind Terror and both versions are included here. There are no significant differences, but a clever split-screen section in the extras package outlines the few there are, and makes interesting watching. Meanwhile the inclusion of the trailer for the Italian release shows how close the film is in look and feel to the “giallo” horror genre already underway in that country.