Rebus at the school of hard Knox

TELEVISION DETECTIVES OFTEN seem familiar. They are usually male, divorced and drink too much. They miss their kids. Sometimes they are alcoholics, battling to not even take a whiff of the hard stuff. Their ex-wives are attractive — much more so than their dishevelled former husbands — and happily coupled up with a much more stable/handsome/richer new squeeze. The tropes are popular, because they work. The challenge for writers is to make the cop in question sufficiently engaging and original within these creative confines. Rebus, now showing on BBC iPlayer, is the second outing for Detective Inspector John Rebus and, gosh, is it good. The first four series, based on the best-selling novels by Ian Rankin, were shown on ITV in the 2000s. The playwright Gregory Burke has reimagined Rebus…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2024

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