"Actor: Alex Howden"

• Shetland Series 1-4 | DVD | (26/03/2018) from £25.02   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Acid House | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £7.10   |  Saving you £2.89 (40.70%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In The Acid House director Paul McGuigan adapts three Irvine Welsh short stories. These are set in an unflinchingly depicted world of grey, breeze block tenements, wiry psychos, short leather skirts, beer, fags and drugs, kinky sex in badly wallpapered lounges, random violence, hideous-looking babies, raves, footy, discarded crisp packets and barely intelligible dialogue featuring the occasional use of non-profanity."The Granton Star Clause" tells the unhappy tale of wee, pasty-faced Boab Doyle, who in one long, unhappy sequence loses his place in the football team, his girlfriend, his job and gets kicked out of the house by his parents, before an encounter with God (here, a hard-bitten, lager-quaffing Maurice Roeves) leads to a surreal, Kafka-esque conclusion. The second tale, "A Soft Touch", is gruellingly and well portrayed but pointlessly depressing. Kevin McKidd plays Johnny, a supermarket employee with an appalling slag-hag of a girlfriend who takes up with his new, violently psychotic and parasitical neighbour Larry. Will he stand up for himself? The answer will leave you thoroughly unsatisfied. Finally, there's "The Acid House", the funniest but silliest of the three tales in which Ewan Bremner plays an obnoxiously livewire Hibs fan who takes one too many tabs and ends up being transported into the mind of stereotypically middle-class couple's--Martin Clunes and Jemma Redgrave--baby. The Acid House is compulsive but bleak, exhilarating but ambivalent. The viewer is asked to bring their own moral compass to these stylised yet non-judgemental episodes. Fans of Trainspotting, however, will certainly find much of the scintillating same here.On the DVD: disappointingly, only the trailer is featured here. However, the DVD transfer in letterbox format is impeccable, used to its best advantage in the more surreal, fast-cut music video-style sequences, while the soundtrack, featuring The Verve and Primal Scream among others, also benefits. --David Stubbs

• The Book Group: Series 1 | DVD | (18/07/2005) from £25.63   |  Saving you £-5.64 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Who says reading is good for you? American Claire (Anne Dudek) has just moved to Glasgow and is extremely keen to meet some new and interesting people. She decides to start a book group. To her utter dismay those who turn up for the first session are very peculiar. They are clearly not the friends she hoped for. Amongst the group there's Kenny (Rotry McCann) a handsome guy in a wheelchair who wants to be a writer. Then there's Janice (Michele Gomez) a bored and frustrated wife of a famous Scottish footballer and the eccentric student Barney (James Lance) who Claire is strangely attracted to. Scottish BAFTA winner Annie Griffin has written and directed this six-part comedy drama about a group of individuals who want to make new friends lead new lives and improve themselves by reading books. Unfortunately it doesn't quite work that way. A little education can be a dangerous thing...

• A Shot At Glory | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Robert Duvall stars as the manager of a second rate Scottish football team in this drama about a man who must battle his own demons while taking on the club's American owner (Michael Keaton).