Rebus launches on Friday 17 May. All episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer from 6am, with episode one airing on BBC Scotland on Friday 17 May at 10pm and on BBC One on Saturday 18 May at 9:25pm.

Based on the best-selling books by Ian Rankin, Rebus reimagines the iconic character John Rebus (Richard Rankin) as a younger Detective Sergeant, drawn into a violent criminal conflict that turns personal.

Shaken after a violent encounter with gangster Ger Cafferty, Edinburgh detective John Rebus finds himself at a psychological crossroads. At odds with a job increasingly driven by corporate technocrats, involved in a toxic affair he knows he needs to end, and all but supplanted in his daughter’s life by his ex-wife’s wealthy new husband, Rebus begins to wonder if he still has a role to play – either as a family man or a police officer. In a time of divisive politics and national discord, Rebus’ broke, ex-soldier brother Michael desperately crosses the line to provide for his family, and Rebus begins to wonder if the law still has meaning, or if everyone is reverting to an older set of rules? And if so, why shouldn’t Rebus do so too?

What drew you to Rebus?

The number one thing was Ian asking me. I’ve known Ian for quite a while now. He claims the first time we ever met was when he was making a documentary for German television about the Edinburgh Festival with Alan Cumming. You can’t make this stuff up! Ian says he came to the Traverse Theatre very late one night and interviewed me and John Tiffany on the stage, but I have no recollection of it. I guess that sums up the festival really! So he reckons that was about 20 years ago. We have a lot in common. Our hometown villages are very near each other in Fife, so he’d always said that if Rebus was going to be done again on TV, he would ask me if I could do it. I was delighted to take it on.

Did you feel a strong link with Rebus, then?

Definitely. Rebus is not just a Scottish character; he is actually a character who is a Fifer who lives and works in Edinburgh. My background is the same. He’s from a mining background, and my grandparents on one side were all from those mining towns and villages. So the background of the character felt really close to me. Rebus inhabits the same kind of psychological landscape and has had the same upbringing as me. This is a detective drama, but at the same time, I thought, “Rebus is a character that I can use to write about Scotland in the way I want to write about Scotland. He has similar type of upbringing and background to me”. So it felt like it would be daft not to do it. That’s what drew me in the most.

In what other ways did you feel connected to Rebus?

His kind of character is very recognisable to me. I am a little bit that way myself. There’s a Scottish word – “thrawn” – which means you make life as difficult as possible for yourself. Things could probably be a lot easier for you, but you have that kind of personality which is drawn to not taking the easiest road. That’s one of the things that Rebus does. The detective who goes against the grain is a trope of TV detectives. But at the same time, it is something that is quite recognisable to me, not just in terms of the institutional world of Scotland, but in Scotland generally. People have that kind of contrary nature where they can’t help but make their life more difficult than it should be. That was one of the things I liked in this character.

Would it also be fair to describe Rebus as a divided soul?

Yes. That schism, where people are two things at once, runs through the literature of Edinburgh. A lot of the great Edinburgh novels are about the divided self. Jekyll & Hyde is obviously the most famous one. The character of Rebus has a bit of that in him. He does have that kind of divided self, but also a divisive personality. So another thing that was really a big draw for me was getting to write something set in Edinburgh with that continuum of literature almost flowing through it.

Can you amplify the idea of Rebus’ duality?

As a policeman, it is his job to uphold the law. But he’s also a person who is willing to go beyond the law and to do things where the end justifies the means. I kept saying to people when we were making the drama, it’s about rules and laws. The laws are the things in our society that were imposed at a certain period of time. They create a framework, and we have to live within it. Whereas the rules are the eternal rules of human existence, which are based on emotion. If somebody hurts you, you hurt them back. That framework of legality makes life better for people, and it will remove the emotion from situations because chaos is on the other side of that. But at the same time, people react to things in an emotional way – of course they do – and people take revenge and do all these things. So all these things are still there in this society, but the law and the police are both suppressing them. Rebus occasionally has to show that he understands the rules. He knows that criminals live by the rules and that sometimes those criminals need to be reminded that the police know the rules as well as the law.

Rebus is the sort of character which the institution of the police still needs, he’s one of those characters who’s probably a little bit of a dinosaur in his world, but they still need the guy who criminals can be scared of. It’s not for his own gain. It’s not about corruption. It’s about his very moralistic view of corruption. He actually has a very Presbyterian worldview.

Did you make a lot of changes from the original novels?

Yes. The great advantage was, the first thing Ian said to me was, “You can do anything you want.” As soon as I came up with the brother storyline and what he was going to be doing, Ian immediately said, “I love that. I missed a trick with that in the books.” He was supportive of me all the way, and he really just let me get on with it. Whenever I needed any help about story points, I would just send him scripts, and he would come back to me and say, “Well, what about this?” He knows how everything operates in that world. But it never felt like he was hanging over me or anything like that. It was just always was very, very easy to go to him with things. It was great.

Why do you think Richard works so well in the title role?

I’ve known Richard since Black Watch, which would be about 2008. He was in it for three years. He’s a terrific actor. First, he brings an audience because Outlander is such a massively popular show. Secondly, his performance is absolutely fantastic. There’s a specific tone to my writing. There’s quite a lot of humour in it, and Richard really gets that.

Edinburgh is another character in the drama, isn’t it?

Yes. Wherever you go in Edinburgh, you get those iconic locations. Anybody who knows the city knows how photogenic it is. It’s beautiful and Gothic. You have the wonderful light on the Firth of Forth and the amazing skies. But it is also this divided city. The rationality of the New Town during the Enlightenment is right next to the medieval Old Town and all that debauchery and vice that went on there. It looks really cinematic and dramatic on film.

What do you think the takeaway will be from this drama?

I hope it reflects Scotland as it really is. The drama feels like it’s real, and it is scary, and it’s got humour in it, and it’s got high stakes. Also, I hope it doesn’t feel too procedural. We have really concentrated as much as possible on the characters and on their family and their internal life, rather than feeling like we’re just making a procedural drama. Obviously, there are procedural elements to it, but probably for me that’s the least interesting part of it. I’m much more interested in the characters. So I hope it feels like a very characterful drama.