BLOOD BROTHERS!
As Inspector Rebus returns to our screens in a brilliant six-part BBC drama, his creator Ian Rankin admits he missed a trick in the bestselling books… by writing off the troubled Edinburgh cop’s sibling too soon. Fortunately, the gloriously gritty new series puts that right
INSPECTOR Rebus creator Ian Rankin has revealed the “no holds barred” BBC remake of his beloved Edinburghset detective books left him flinching. Having bought back the TV rights in 2012 after becoming disillusioned with the previous adaptation, the author said he was “jumping off his sofa” in excitement at the new series.
“Everybody worked hard to make sure this was what we wanted it to be, that it was long-form, that it’s gritty,” Sir Ian tells the Daily Express.
“It’s no holds barred. There’s bits of this, when I was watching it, where I was actually flinching. It’s full on and it’s proper grownup relationships, it’s proper adult drama.
“It looks a million dollars, the acting is great, it’s dark, it’s complex. The characters are three-dimensional.
“All the themes I try and deal with in the books are here. It’s great.”
The new six-part series, which arrives on the BBC tomorrow night, sees John Rebus as a maverick young Detective Sergeant played by Outlander’s Richard Rankin, 41, no relation.
“It was within the first ten pages of episode one that had me absolutely hooked,” the Scottish actor admits. “I could tell [screenwriter] Gregory Burke was doing something new and exciting with this. It felt real, it felt dark, and it felt charged.
“Ian said to Greg, ‘Take Rebus and do what you want with it’. That’s already incredibly intriguing. Great source material amplified by Greg’s almost uncensored and very honest approach reboots the character in a way that is thrilling for TV.”
Having sold 30 million copies and counting over the course of 24 books, with a 25th coming in October, of which more later, Rebus was previously portrayed by John Hannah, and then Ken Stott, in 14 episodes for ITV between 2000 and 2007.
BUT despite critical acclaim, Fifeborn Sir Ian, 64, knighted in the Queen’s 2022 birthday honours for services to literature and charity, had grown frustrated with his bestselling books being crunched down into a single television episode per novel.
“Towards the end of the older Rebus episodes, it was 45 minutes per book,” he says.
“And this time round, we’ve got six hours to tell one story. So we’ve taken bits and pieces from various books. We’ve taken characters from different stages of life in the books and we’ve put them in a cocktail blender and we’ve shaken them up a bit.”
That means the appearance of Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke (Lucie Shorthouse) and Rebus’s ‘Complaints’ department nemesis, Detective Inspector Malcom Fox (Thoren Ferguson), who don’t appear until later in the books. But how does the 40-year-old Rebus fit in with the two previous TV adaptations?
“It doesn’t. It stands alone as its own thing. It’s set in the present day, so you can’t really call it a prequel,” Sir Ian continues. “I mean, Rebus is a young man, but he’s in the present day in 2024. So we can deal with the politics, we can deal with the social issues of the present day, but have a younger, more vigorous actor in the main role.
“The screenwriter, Gregory Burke, had worked with Richard before. He’d been in Greg’s play, Black Watch, so they knew each other really well. Gregory was very keen and we worked hard to persuade Richard to do it because he’s a very busy man, especially with Outlander and other projects.”
The new series takes the character in directions even his creator admits he should have considered when writing the books.
“Fairly early Greg latched onto Rebus’s brother Michael and said, ‘Ian, you didn’t do as much with that guy as you should have done’. And when I looked back at the books, I thought, ‘He’s right’,” Sir Ian says.
“You know, that kind of brother relationship, all those kinds of binaries you get in the Rebus books, all the Jekylls and Hydes, are right there with Rebus and his brother and I just threw him away too cheaply.
“Greg has given Michael a lot more to do. So it’s much more of the two brothers, knocking heads with each other from the get-go. And they’ll either end up destroying each other or saving each other.” Michael is played by Glasgow-born Brian Ferguson, 44, recently seen in The Ipcress File, who said: “When I read the first two scripts, it was clear immediately how good they were. I thought they were fantastically written and a really new take on Rebus.
“They felt very contemporary and really honoured the books, whilst being something totally different.
“It’s only when you read it that you realise, ‘Gosh, it was 20 years ago that we last had Rebus on our screens’ and just how much has changed in those 20 years.
“The gap is getting bigger between the very rich and the rest of us. This shows how difficult that is for the majority of people dealing with the cost-of-living crisis.
“So you’ve got these really, really pressing issues that are absolutely part of the story and of these characters’ lives. That all feels very, very contemporary.”
As for playing the DS’s older brother, Ferguson, describes their on-screen relationship as “antagonistic”.
“This is very familiar, particularly among working-class men,” he says. “The only way that brothers know how to express their love for each other is through aggression. We
sense that there’s a real love there, but they have no idea how to communicate that to each other really.”
Unlike Sir Ian’s Michael, who is killed off fairly early in the series (“I think he died,” Sir Ian chuckles, “I mean, I can’t remember that far back”), this character is quite different from the man in the books.
“He’s married and he has two teenage boys. In the last couple of years, he’s come out the army after 22 years,” Ferguson continues.
“He and his wife try to set up a business just at the time of Covid and the pandemic, and then the cost-of-living crisis hits and the business fails.
“They’ve remortgaged and all of that, so when we meet them, they’re in a pretty desperate situation. They’ve moved back from Edinburgh to Fife, almost to the street that Michael grew up in. They live in a very cramped, very rundown flat.
“Michael is a man of real honour, a real family man. I think you get this a lot with men; their sense of honour comes from how they’re able to look after their family. Michael’s a man who is not able to do that. The family are really up against it. They can’t get enough work, the business has failed, and they don’t have enough money to make ends meet.”
Which sets the scene perfectly for a clash between the brothers.
Sir Ian, whose last Rebus novel, 2022’s A Heart Full of Headstones, topped the bestsellers’ charts everywhere, dipped out of writing hardbacks for an e-book novella.
The Rise, written for Amazon, features one of London’s most exclusive apartment buildings and two new characters, DS Gillian Gish and DI Jack Milton, in a fast-paced and twisty murder mystery which the Express named as one of last year’s best books. Fans will be delighted to hear Rebus – the older version – is back with a new novel this October as well. In an extraordinary twist, the last novel saw him facing jail for the murder of his long-time adversary, gangster Morris “Big Ger” Cafferty.
Its author is tight-lipped, saying: “I can’t say too much but it’s going to be called Midnight And Blue. I’ll literally finish the final edit this week and it’ll be done and dusted.”
THERE’S also a new play, Rebus: A Game Called Malice, co-written during lockdown with Simon Reade. “It’s going to be touring in September, starting off in Scotland and playing in England as well. It’s quite a big tour coming up.”
All in all, after taking most of 2023 off at the behest of his wife, Miranda, a former civil servant, so they could travel, Sir Ian is apparently as busy as ever.
But did he ever fear his new TV adaptation might never happen?
“You never know with television if stuff’s going to happen or not,” adds Sir Ian. “I mean, until you actually see it on the screen, you’re never sure.
“But I’m really happy with this. There are some lovely moments with his daughter.
“There are some lovely moments with his ex-wife trying to keep that relationship going. Trying to be an absentee father while his ex-wife has managed to connect with a much richer guy.
“There’s also some really powerful stuff with Cafferty (Stuart Bowman) early on. It basically opens with, with a fight between the two of them. There’s a scene in a hospital which had me jumping out of my chair. So, yeah, it’s full of amazing bits.”
There’s no puzzle here – this is the adaptation John Rebus and Ian Rankin deserve.
● Rebus begins streaming today on BBC iPlayer, with episode one airing on BBC Scotland tonight at 10pm and BBC One tomorrow at 9.25pm