The two series of Shoestring to be released as a DVD set

Good news! The series of Shoestring are about to be released on DVD.

The Network on Air site says:

Trevor Eve stars as radio "Private Ear" Eddie Shoestring in the massively successful BBC drama series. 

Co-created by Robert Banks Stewart, Shoestring also stars Michael Medwin as Eddie's long-suffering boss Don Satchley; Liz Crowther as station receptionist Sonia; and Doran Godwin as Eddie's landlady, on-off lover and occasional assistant Erica. This complete-series set also features appearances from Diana Dors, Harry H. Corbett, Toyah Wilcox, Geraldine James and Michael Elphick. 

Poison phone-ins and threats to a disc jockey lead Radio West to hire private investigator Eddie Shoestring – who discovers it may be a longer-running job than he first thought! 

This set also includes a brand-new book on the making of the series by archive television historian Andrew Pixley, with contributions from original cast and crew members.

The two series were broadcast by the BBC in 1979 and 1980, and made Trevor Eve a household name.

I once wrote of the programme's appeal:

Eddie Shoestring was always a bit of a fantasist. He had suffered some sort of breakdown while working in computers and his new image as a Philip Marlowe figure - stalking the streets, not of Los Angeles, but Bristol - was his way of coping. He life as a private detective did not represent an exploration of the real world so much as an escape from it. 

So Shoestring never was grittily realistic, In fact, like many fantasists, Eddie drew people into his world.