Was watching Squire, the TV play starring Alan Hull, and came across something that Martin Jackson of the Daily Mail said in a review of it...
"it looks like the beginning of a new acting career, for Alan Hull is also working with the production team - writer Tom Pickard and director Barry Hanson - on a television version of Dostoievsky's 'The Idiot', transformed to Tyneside and likely to be retitled The Nutter."
So I dug around and found some further elaboration from Tom Pickard himself:
Is it true that you and Alan were working on a Tyneside version of 'The Idiot' to be renamed 'The Nutter' - and did anything ever come of it? I'd just read Dostoyesky's 'The Idiot' and when the Squire was being previewed we were interviewed by a pleasant woman, a famous film critic working for the Times, or the Observer, and as a quip threw in the idea of a Geordie version and calling it The Nutta! We enjoyed the joke and let it ride. Although we did often discuss other collaborations, including that one nothing came of it.
...what I wouldn't give for Alan Hull as a Geordie Myshkin!
