Rebus star Richard Rankin on TV reboots, defying his late dad's advice and getting his arse out

Richard Rankin’s dad warned him not to become a cop. Now he’s about to be the most famous one in Scotland. 

“One of the biggest things he said to me was, ‘Don’t join the police,’” said the Glasgow actor, recalling his late father Colin’s advice. “He said it was a very hard, very demanding and sometimes quite overwhelming job. One of his first days on the job was pulling someone’s body out of the River Clyde. A finger came off the body because it had been in the water for so long. 

“So he wasn’t the biggest advocate of joining the police force. My dad died six years ago, and it would have been nice to discuss this with him now. He’d almost have been like a resource for me.” 

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Rankin would no doubt trade all the words that have been scripted for his new role for a few more with his father. But as secondary resources go, he has plenty to fall back on by way of research for the biggest part of his career so far. The 41-year-old makes his debut this week as the titular character in the BBC’s much-anticipated reboot of Rebus, based on the detective novels written by the actor’s Fifer namesake, Sir Ian. 

This is DC John Rebus as a younger man, reimagined in a contemporary Edinburgh setting of iPhones and social media, Amazon delivery drivers and zero-hours contracts.  

The old, cobbled streets are the same as those policed by John Hannah and Ken Stott, who embodied the rough-hewn cop in the 1990s and 2000s, but the world he polices is very different.  

And so is the way he polices it. Episode one opens with a breathtaking scene in the back of an ambulance, followed by a moment of unflinching sibling violence in a rundown Edinburgh flat. Rebus 3.0 comes out brawling, almost, you might imagine, in anger at having been away for so long. At times, Richard Rankin’s ferocious 2024 take makes the previous depictions seem like an episode of Teletubbies. 

“It opens with a full pace and gives you a great idea of this character now,” said Rankin, in understatement. “There’s an unpredictability to him. You don’t see the anger coming.  

“I saw a lot of Ken Stott’s Rebus when I was younger as my dad always watched it. I remember there was an east coast / west coast thing growing up in Scotland with Rebus and Taggart on the telly. Almost like an allegiance. But I didn’t go back and look at old episodes for this. I didn’t want to be influenced by that in any way.” 

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Rankin’s casting as the famous fictional cop has its roots in a theatre project first staged 16 years ago. 

In 2008, the National Theatre of Scotland commissioned playwright Gregory Burke to research a piece about the realities of conflict in the Middle East for the squaddies from Fife’s Black Watch battalion. 

The resulting play – Black Watch – became a huge success, touring the world multiple times, picking up four Olivier Awards, reams of five-star reviews and countless celebrity endorsements. Rankin was cast as Glenrothes squaddie Granty. Nobody knew it, but the role was his audition for Rebus over a decade later. 

He said: “I had heard they were rebooting Rebus, there was a buzz about it in acting circles, but I didn’t know anything about who was behind it. It seemed like 80% of the actors I knew were meeting for it and auditioning for it over a period of two or three months, so I figured they weren’t interested in me for any sort of part in it, which is the way it goes in the industry. 

“Then I got a call from my agent in 2022 saying that Gregory Burke and [director] Niall MacCormick wanted to send me a script. Even then I didn’t think it was for the part of Rebus. Not even in a fantasy way. 

“Greg sometimes refers to Rebus as Black Watch 2.0, and I think that’s an idea of the flavour of it. Brian Ferguson plays Rebus’s brother, Michael, and he was in the first cast of Black Watch. 

“It would have been their local regiment, and it could have been the case that these boys were squaddies in the show he wrote all those years ago, then grew up and joined the police. 

“Greg had a say in my casting, he was instrumental. He writes with a certain dry or dark humour. I think he’s always thought I get that and there’s a lot of that in my nature too: dry, sometimes undetectable, sarcasm. I love playing that element in Rebus.” 

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After almost a decade building up a sizeable female fanbase playing  Roger Wakefield MacKenzie in Outlander, Richard Rankin’s star is in the ascendant, and he knows his highest-profile leading role to date will be open to scrutiny, and not just from Outlander fans (free spoiler alert for them: RR gets his bum out in the name of crimefighting). 

He said: “I don’t think my arse is in Rebus to hook Outlander fans, but if that’s what it does, then so be it. 

“I come from a show which is based on another hugely successful series of books, and that character was also very anticipated when he came along. 

“There are still a lot of fans of the other series, who seem to be quite vocal about this version. Some are looking forward to it, some are on my Instagram timeline telling me I’m not their John Rebus before they’ve even seen it. There’s a bit of ‘all right, show us what you’ve got then’. 

“There’s a huge affection for the character. This is a fresh take on doing him justice.” 

Rebus is on BBC Scotland, BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

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