Reinventing Rebus
Ian Rankin’s literary detective John Rebus returns to the screen as a young officer disenchanted by the police and his role in it. DQ visits the Edinburgh set to find out how Rebus tells the story of a man at a crossroads as his personal and professional lives implode. Shut inside an ambulance, in a dark corner of Edinburgh, one enraged man is attempting to suffocate another, and the homicidal attack is only halted when someone inadvertently opens the ambulance door. It quickly emerges, however, that the furious would-be murderer is in fact a police officer. DS John Rebus (played by Outlander star Richard Rankin) is trying to kill his arch enemy, the violent criminal mastermind Ger Cafferty (The Serpent’s Stuart Bowman). But who is the real villain of the piece? How can you distinguish between police and thieves? This is the theme that powers Rebus, a gritty and absorbing detective drama acquired by BBC One from distributor Viaplay Content Distribution after commissioning broadcaster Viaplay pulled out of the UK. Produced by Eleventh Hour Films, this new adaptation of Ian Rankin’s bestselling novels follows in the footsteps of a previous Rebus series starring John Hannah and then Ken Stott that aired on ITV between 2000 and 2007. But here, in the hands of screenwriter Gregory Burke (Six Four), a young Rebus finds himself at a psychological crossroads. Increasingly disenchanted with a job that is more and more controlled by corporate technocrats, Rebus feels he no longer has a place in … Continue reading Reinventing Rebus
