My Extreme Drugs Diary, Channel 5 review - the tedium of taking heroin

★★★ MY EXTREME DRUGS DIARY, CHANNEL 5 The tedium of taking heroin

Documentary series featuring substance abusers wearing metallic masks

Jacob has just managed to shoot up. No easy matter because his veins are, he says, non-usable, and are like those of an 80-year-old man. He’s in his twenties and has been on heroin for six years. Unusually, he works full time, has a car and a flat – blood-spattered ones. When the heroin kicks in he doesn’t feel stoned but as if he could “work on some graphic design or art work”. Not quite Edward St Aubyn or William Burroughs territory, though he also says that it “removes any sort of sickness in your mind”.

CD: Kornél Kovács - Stockholm Marathon

Tropical house taken to Sweden and made interesting

On his second album, Swedish star DJ Kornél Kovács has achieved the impossible and made “tropical house” interesting. Somehow, he's taken every cliché of that slow, lilting pop dance sound Drake and lifestyle influencers Instagramming from pristine beaches and tweaked them to find unexpected strangeness and depths.

CD: Royal Trux - White Stuff

Purest impurity from the reformed dirty duo

It's 18 years since the last Royal Trux album, but it might just as well be 18 months, so easily have they slipped back into their sound. OK, Neil Hegarty and Jennifer Herera have been gigging together again on and off since 2015, but even so it's quite astonishing how natural this record sounds. But then again, the Royal Trux sound was always something that sounded more like a channelling of something elemental than anything composed or contrived.

The Mule review - good ol' boy rides again

★★★★ THE MULE 87-year-old Clint Eastwood still owns every frame with languid charm

 

He's been a movie star for half a century but can Eastwood cut it one more time?

Baggage can weigh a movie down. The Mule comes with quite a bit of baggage, and not just the kilos of coke stashed in the car’s trunk. Clint Eastwood’s fifty plus years as a screen icon turned director, his dodgy love life and libertarian politics all make it hard to walk into a cinema showing his latest film without dragging along a whole load of preconceptions.

Beautiful Boy review - well-acted but a slog

★★ BEAUTIFUL BOY Steve Carell & Timothée Chalamet can't enliven meth addict memoir

Steve Carell and the astounding Timothée Chalamet can't enliven meth addict memoir

The tortuous road to addiction and back again – or maybe not  makes for a faintly tedious experience in Beautiful Boy, notwithstanding the committed performances of an A-list cast.

CD: Ex Mykah - 16, 17

★★★★ EX MYKAH - 16,17 Intriguingly offbeat debut from Los Angeles scenester

Intriguingly offbeat debut from Los Angeles scenester

Ex Mykah is a multi-instrumentalist and producer on the LA music scene who’s worked with the names such as Mark Ronson and Miike Snow. His own debut album sounds very far from either of those. Instead it comes from the warped, alt-hip hop end of the pop spectrum, while also recalling that brief Noughties blog flourish “chillwave” (the likes of Neon Indian and Washed Out).

CD: Hawkwind - Road to Utopia

The grizzled, grimey drug-rockers get an easy-listening makeover with somewhat surprising results

Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt. Yes, Mike “Wombles” Batt. Mike “Elkie Brooks” Batt. Mike “Katie Melua” Batt. Mike “Bright Eyes” Batt.

Yardie review - Idris Elba shoots straight in his directorial debut

★★★ YARDIE Idris Elba shoots straight in his directorial debut, a rich palette of sights and sounds

Adaptation of Victor Headley's novel is a rich palette of sights and sounds

The first significant British film to explore the influence of Jamaican sound systems in London was Babylon. Shot in 1980, its street patois was deemed impenetrable enough to merit subtitles. Times change. Yardie revisits the same world and era – it is bookended by heaving get-togethers in which sound systems pulse and throb.

Silk Road (How To Buy Drugs Online), Trafalgar Studios review - Geordie chancer comes of age

★★★ SILK ROAD (HOW TO BUY DRUGS ONLINE), TRAFALGAR STUDIOS Geordie chancer comes of age

New monologue about drug dealing on the Dark Web is well written if a bit slight

The Dark Web has an intriguing sound about it. Like something out of JRR Tolkein or JK Rowling, it suggests a netherland peopled by strange creatures, and maybe even dangerous monsters. As indeed it is.