Best fix for poorly deinterlaced or "filmised" PAL video?

[DragonQ]

Several digitally shot UK comedies from the early-to-mid-2000s like Peep Show and The Office were shot interlaced at (50i) but then converted to progressive (25p) in post-production...poorly. It would probably look fine if done with modern deinterlacers but whatever they used at the time wasn't really up to the task. This results in lots of combing artefacts around fine detail, particularly in motion, and in the worst cases stair-stepping all over the place.

Here's an example video which is a remux from a PAL DVD to illustrate this. The content is 25PsF and you can easily see what I'm talking about by looking at the eyes or teeth when they're moving. I've attached screenshots with an example too, both at 1024x576 and blown up to 2560x1440 using NGU AA High.

Can anyone suggest a good filter(s) that might improve this? I've tried a simple decomb and deinterlace in Handbrake, both of which were no good, so I'm guessing something a bit fancier is needed.

[jagabo]

QTGMC(InputType=2) cleans it up pretty well.

[DragonQ]

QTGMC(InputType=2) cleans it up pretty well.

Thanks, I'll see if I can remember how to setup Avisynth and give it a go...

[jagabo]

example...