Rebus, review: lean, mean and definitely not John Hannah – this is a most welcome revival
The Doctor is not the only shape-shifting character to regenerate on screens of late. Last seen on ITV in the Noughties, first in the guise of John Hannah, then Ken Stott, after nearly two decades away Rebus (BBC One) is now incarnated as Richard Rankin. No relation to the character’s creator Ian Rankin, he doesn’t share much DNA with other Rebuses either. Though the Edinburgh detective remains a rule-flouting loner, this ruggedly handsome Rebus 3.0 is practically a pin-up.
Rebirthed into a present day of smartphones and galloping inequality, the new young(ish) Rebus will perhaps set off head-spins and conniptions among scholars of the novels. While the dark stones of Auld Reekie glower as impassively as ever, everything else has been tossed up in the air.
Take Rebus’s daughter, Sammy. She was a child in Knots and Crosses, the first novel published in 1987. She still is in 2024, and through her there are touching glimpses of his vulnerability. As for his sidekick Siobhan Clarke (Lucie Shorthouse), she becomes a newbie on the so-called accelerated leadership pathway, and just off the detective course. “I hear it’s a whole week now,” quips Rebus drily.
The knotty case they’re investigating has all the staples: thugs, drugs, guns, torture. It’s made knottier than usual for Rebus by the involvement of his combustible brother, Michael (a riveting Brian Ferguson). Michael cameoed as a drug-dealing hypnotist in Knots and Crosses but here is rebooted as a struggling veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. In a searing diatribe he speaks for other old soldiers traumatised by civilian life: “That’s what you’re really not allowed to say – that you enjoyed a war.”
It’s no surprise this crops up in a passionate, clever script by Gregory Burke, who researched and wrote the hit play Black Watch (which Richard Rankin acted in). The nimble plot, all fat deftly excised, grips through to the final frames. No character goes to waste: not the woman Rebus shouldn’t be sleeping with, not even the dull super-rich wine-nerd that Rebus’s ex-wife and daughter now live with.
There’s a generous side order of mordant comedy too, particularly when gangster-cum-informant Ger Cafferty (Stuart Bowman, wonderful as an all but Jacobean villain) rants about the undesirability of a united Ireland. Fun is had with a hoodlum called McJagger, who is touchy around references to the Stones.
Not that this Rebus would know much about Mick and Keef. At one point he is accused of having no cultural hinterland. “I have the culture of not liking things,” he reasons. “There you go, that’s my culture.” You’d hope he’d watch this and like it. Rankin has lashings of charisma. Requiring no previous knowledge of the character, it is a most welcome revival.
Rebus is on BBC Scotland on Friday at 9pm, and BBC One on Saturday at 9pm; all six episodes are available on BBC iPlayer now