By the time he retired The Streets in 2011, Mike Skinner nearly had it all: a family, an iron-plated musical legacy and, in the heartbreak anthem “Dry Your Eyes”, a surprise hit so huge that he could live off the royalties. But one dream eluded him. After conjuring a cinema of the everyday on his two landmark albums, 2002’s Original Pirate Material and 2004’s A Grand Don’t Come for Free, he fantasised he would one day shoot a feature film.
Twelve years later – and more than 100 grand out of pocket – the quixotic everyman has written, directed, edited and acted that fantasy into reality. The result is The Darker The Shadow, The Brighter The Light, a noirish odyssey born out of the most challenging decade of his life, when he emerged from The Streets’ first act and the aftermath of a serious gambling addiction. The film’s protagonist, a mid-level DJ also named Mike Skinner, is coaxed into an underworld of shady clubland honchos, presenting the chance to change his fortunes with a risky side hustle or to turn detective and solve the case of a fishy nightclub death.
