Practical Audio Visual Chinese

I used to have a Taiwanese obsessed Chinese teacher who would swear by these books. To be honest, out of all the Chinese materials that I've ever studied I think these book have been the easiest to understand. Mandarin is a pretty difficult language, but these books have pretty adequete English explinations. I've heard that Shida has put a lot of time and effort into researching how foriegners learn Chinese, and the best way to teach it. I think the only downside is that they're all in Traditional Chinese,
http://www.youtube.com/user/leosaran#p/c/57FE818F7E881FE1

You can also find the videos here on Youtube for self study, but they're a bit old and the actors can be painful to look at.
I found the ones about book three hilarirous because they're supposed to be in America, but it's the most Taiwanese America that I've ever seen and you can see Shida in the backgroud.

http://www.youtube.com/user/leosaran#p/c/57FE818F7E881FE1

 You can also buy them online at Amazon if you're located overseas