BBC1’s new Rebus is the kind of TV detective they just don’t make any more

Imagine a new series of Morse in which the real-ale-quaffing, jag-driving opera buff is turned into a speed-snorting mod on a pimped up Lambretta. Or – this one I’d actually like to see – jeune Poirot, featuring a clean-shaven habitué of fin-de-siècle Brussels absinthe dives. This may give you an inkling as to how upset one or two Rebus fans are about the Edinburgh detective’s latest TV incarnation.

Confusingly titled Rebus – as opposed to, say, Punk Rebus or Wee Rebussie – the series depicts a protagonist quite a bit younger than his former TV incarnations, grumpy, dishevelled Ken Stott and a mite-too-smooth John Hannah. Still only at the detective-sergeant stage of his career, he is a lot more aggressive – like maybe Begbie from Trainspotting would be in the unlikely event he ever joined the police – with a hair-trigger temper and a drinking problem.

This isn’t so much a faithful adaptation of Ian Rankin’s crime novels as a controlled demolition. I say ‘controlled’ because Rankin himself gave screenwriter Gregory Burke, author of the hit play Black Watch (based on interviews with Iraq war veterans), carte blanche to reimagine Rebus as he wished. And apparently he’s very happy with the result.

I don’t blame him, for this Rebus is the kind of TV detective they just don’t make any more. He’s a bloke. He likes pubs. He’s guiltily sleeping with the wife of his best mate (and mentor and former colleague, who was crippled in a run-in with a gangland boss). And even though he isn’t obviously buff and could look almost cherubic if he bothered to shave, it turns out that he is properly handy with his fists.

Richard Rankin (no relation of Ian’s) is so perfectly believable in the role that you never tire of watching him and keep rooting for him even when he’s being a complete and utter idiot.