Screengrab: Sunshine On Leith

RICHARD LUTZ checks out the best film on the box this week, and it’s a bright wee thing from Scotland.

Now, when I mention the word ‘Sunshine’ your gaze usually does not drift north of Carlisle to the land of howling Picts, haggis and a sharp dram of whisky.

Nope. It stays firmly in the south coast, if not towards the Med or Florida.

But Sunshine on Leith (Sky Premier, Thurs, 1.55AM and other times) is a bright breezy music-filmed blast with a great track from those Fife boys, The Proclaimers.

When it landed in 2013 in our cineplexi, I think most smarty pants movie goers said this just won’t work. The Reid brothers (aka The Proclaimers), launch tough, punky songs straight into your face and many felt the music just wouldn’t fit into a potentially cheesy movie narrative.

But it does.

Edinburgh is misty, hard looking, handsome and at times grim as two soldiers return from Afghanistan to find that the city of their dreams is a tough place to settle down. But the transitions to the songs are not at all clunky or mismanaged and fit snugly into the strong storyline.

Let’s Get Married, 500 Miles, Letter from America , and the eponymous Sunshine on Leith jump off the screen with seasoned supporting actors hatchet-faced Peter Mullen and birdlike Jane Horrocks and others giving it their best with the El-Classico songs.

The two returning squaddies are played by George Mackay and Jason Flemyng, not only well known as faces from UK tv but also (gulp) Londoners doing a fair job with the rasp of the Scots accent.

The delightfully named director Dexter Fletcher (double gulp, he’s from the dreaded Home Counties) is a seasoned actor beginning his career way back in ’76 with Bugsy Malone. Behind the camera, he grabs the music and let’s it rip.

And for your money, you get The Proclaimers themselves in cameo roles as a couple of drunks staggering out of the pub at the start of the movie.

But spoiler, spoiler, spoiler. Two of the roistering drinking scenes were filmed not in Edinburgh, but across the neck of Scotland in Glaswegian boozers.

Ouch.