A loose adaptation from Gogol,
Diary of a Madman does deal with mental
illness, but it doesn’t do so explicitly for its first hour, instead setting a
detailed scene. Al Smith’s Scottish transposition takes inspiration from the popular
metaphor of the Forth Bridge, said to take so long to paint that by the time it’s
done the other end needs starting again. Here it becomes the job of a single family
who’ve been doing it for generations, Pop Sheeran (Liam Brennan) taking a year to
put on each new coat before going back to the start. His son’s unable to help him at
the moment so the company that manages the bridge has sent along Matthew (Guy
Clark,) an English post-grad at Edinburgh University, whose thesis studies the
effectiveness of a new formulation of paint intended to cut down on all this work.
In one of those plot-driving coincidences, Matthew then discovers that Pop’s teenage
daughter Sophie (Louise McMenemy) is the girl he slept with a few weeks earlier.
