"There's nae gangsters in Edinburgh, Michael. Just boys that think they are."
Rebus is a 2024 British detective series from The BBC, produced by Eleventh Hour Films and Viaplay. It's adapted from Ian Rankin's Rebus novels.—John Rebus
John Rebus (Richard Rankin) is an ex-soldier who's now a police Detective Sergeant in Edinburgh. A year after the fallout from an attempted murder cast a long shadow over his career, he's lost his family, he's in therapy for anger issues and he's drinking heavily.
John's ex-wife's new partner is extremely wealthy — and they're offering his daughter a standard of life he can't match. At the other end of the scale, John's brother Michael (Brian Ferguson) is a career soldier who's now left the army and spiralled into debt. John himself doesn't quite fit into either world.
When a gangster is stabbed in broad daylight, in the middle of Edinburgh, DS Rebus finds himself with a new partner, DC Siobhan Clarke (Lucie Shorthouse) and a high-profile case to solve. Unfortunately, it's one with links to his past - and one that might entangle his own family.
Rebus contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Early Appearance:
- DC Siobhan Clarke appears in the first episode. In the original novels, she's only introduced in the fifth book (The Black Book), six years into the series.
- Ger Cafferty makes his debut in the first episode's Action Prologue. In the novels he's not even mentioned until the third book.
- DI Malcolm Fox appears in the first episode. In the novels, he's introduced as the protagonist of two of Ian Rankin's non-Rebus novels, and only joins the Rebus series almost 20 books (and over 20 years) after it starts.
- The Alcoholic: A year after his Career-Ending Injury, George Blantyre spends most nights drinking himself into a stupor.
- Berserk Button: Jimmy McJagger reacts very badly to Rolling Stones jokes about his surname. After he's attacked in the first episode and answers all police questions with "no comment", Siobhan comments that it's obvious that they're not going to get any satisfaction and Jimmy immediately blows his top and starts swearing at her.
- Blackmail:
- At the very start of the series, gangster Ger Cafferty injures John Rebus and leaves John's mentor George Blantyre with life-changing injuries, seemingly in response for something George previously did. John responds by trying to kill Cafferty, but is interrupted. All three men then remain silent about the event - Cafferty threatens to reveal John's murder attempt and George's history, ensuring that he's not prosecuted. A year later he finds something else to threaten John with, revealing that he knows about John's affair with George's wife Maggie.
- Midway through the first season it's revealed that Blantyre, a police officer, once robbed Cafferty and kept the cash. Cafferty's been blackmailing him ever since.
- Boom, Headshot!: When one of Cafferty's Northern Irish drug suppliers interrupts Michael's raid on their stash, Michael shoots him through the head. One of Michael's friends later compliments him on the shot.
- Bullying a Dragon: Midway through the first season it's revealed that Lockie Moncrieffe, Rhona's rich new partner, is funding some of Daryl Christie's drug schemes. When the feud between Christie and Cafferty goes badly, Daryl tells Lockie they may make a loss on this one and Lockie threatens him, pointing out that he knows where all Daryl's money is. In response, Daryl simply murders him.
- Career-Ending Injury: George Blantyre is almost killed and becomes a wheelchair user after the car crash at the start of the first episode. He leaves the police force as a consequence.
- The Cavalry: When two men attack criminal Jimmy McJagger in an Edinburgh street, in broad daylight, a passerby (homeless ex-soldier Andy Rolland) intervenes to help fight them off. He's gone by the time the police arrive.
- Cowboy Cop: Rebus is sometimes perceived as a loose cannon, and some elements of it are true. After Cafferty almost kills George Blantyre and injures Rebus, he gets subjected to the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique and Rebus then tries to murder him. He's not above breaking into a suspect's house or unofficially quizzing a prisoner without a lawyer present, either.
- Defective Detective: John Rebus is a hard-drinking detective whose marriage has ended, and is in therapy for his anger issues. He tries to stop drinking in the first episode, and seems to manage until Lockie Moncrieffe offers him wine when he visits his daughter, later in the series. After that he starts drinking heavily again.
- Dirty Cop: Rebus' mentor George Blantyre robbed one of gangster Cafferty's safehouses, using information from Cafferty's accountant, and kept the money. Cafferty later identified them, killed the accountant and blackmailed Blantyre, forcing him to help make the murder look like a suicide.
- Fingore: When Jack and Kai, two of Darryl Christie's drug dealers, are robbed, Jack's injured and Kai's unharmed. Christie tells Jack he at least made a stand, so he can pick which finger Kai loses. He then tells him to cut it off. Jack refuses, so Christie takes the cutters and amputates Kai's finger himself.
- Funetik Aksent: John Rebus and his brother Michael have a strong Scottish accent and it sometimes finds its way into subtitles, with spellings like "toon" (town) and "aboot" (about).
- Hired to Hunt Yourself: Rebus' mentor, George Blantyre, is left paralysed after a car accident and, a year later, is convinced that his wife Maggie is having an affair, so asks Rebus to find the man involved. It's Rebus who's sleeping with Maggie, and he subsequently wonders if George already knows that.
- I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: A variation. Shaun tells Darryl Christie that Jack said he'd do anything, so he told him to walk into the hospital and kill the injured Jimmy McJagger. He claims he expected Jack to run off in fear, not actually go through with it. Christie is unimpressed, as Jack can connect him to the crime and it risks becoming a Revealing Cover Up.
- Mood Whiplash: In episode four, the scene cuts from Darryl lifting Shaun's shirt and seeing how he's been tortured with a blowtorch to sausages sizzling on Michael's barbecue.
- Never Suicide: Derek Christie, father of Darryl Christie, apparently jumped from a high window. Jimmy McJagger actually killed him on Cafferty's orders, and Cafferty then blackmailed George Blantyre into covering it up.
- The Nicknamer: Downplayed. When Rebus starts working with Siobhan, he immediately decides that she needs a nickname. He eventually settles on Shiv, after discovering that she hates it.
- Northern Irish and Nasty: Cafferty's drug suppliers are Northern Irish and said to be associated with the UDA. After Michael and his friends kill one of them during a robbery, they send a bunch of thugs to help Cafferty get payback.
- Sacrificial Lion: Andy Rolland is a homeless ex-soldier who selflessly intervenes to prevent a murder in an Edinburgh street. He's probably the most sympathetic of the ex-soldiers drawn into Michael's robbery scheme — he's only there at all because John Rebus put him back in touch with Michael, unaware of what was going on. When Cafferty's Northern Irish associates break into Michael's house seeking revenge, he saves Michael's wife Chrissie, but is shot dead in the struggle, signalling just how bloody — and how personal — the gang violence is getting.
- Secret-Keeper: At the start of season one, Gill is the only other person who knows what happened between John Rebus and Ger Cafferty a year earlier. She makes it very clear that she's not going to let it endanger her retirement and pension.
- Sickbed Slaying: Shaun sends Jack to kill Jimmy McJagger in his hospital bed. Siobhan and John intervene, but he still manages to cut Jimmy's throat.
- Stealing from Thieves: After losing his job and spiralling into debt, John Rebus' brother Michael dons a balaclava, takes a pistol he kept from his army days and robs some local drug dealers at gunpoint. He then gathers some friends and makes a second, far bigger raid on Ger Cafferty's suppliers, with fatal consequences.
