Irvine Welsh’s Crime (STV)
Here’s a deadly drinking game, for anyone with an asbestos liver and a craving for gritty police thrillers — watch Irvine Welsh’s Crime and take a slug of cheap whisky every time it rips off Rebus.
Long before the six-part series is over, you’ll be pickled like an onion.
The similarities between Welsh’s anti-hero DI Ray Lennox (Dougray Scott) and novelist Ian Rankin’s DI John Rebus (played on BBC1 earlier this year by Richard Rankin) are not parallels — they’re photocopies.
Both are cynical alcoholics, maverick cops hunting killers in Edinburgh. Both are emotionally damaged and single, regarded with a mixture of resentment, reverence and suspicion by their colleagues.
Anyone with an asbestos liver and a craving for gritty police thrillers — watch Irvine Welsh ‘s (pictured) Crime and take a slug of cheap whisky every time it rips off Rebus
The similarities between Welsh’s anti-hero DI Ray Lennox (Dougray Scott) and novelist Ian Rankin’s DI John Rebus are photocopies
Both rely heavily on a junior, female partner who is rising through the ranks, thanks to their mentorship. Both loathe corruption, and both let their obsession with unsolved cases dominate their lives. They’re both football fans, too — though one follows Hibernian, while the other supports their city rivals, Hearts.
The more significant difference is that Rebus is ex-forces and working class, while Lennox’s family is a bit more Waitrose — his sister is a solicitor, his brother-in-law a restaurateur.
That might explain his woke streak. He drinks nettle tea, a brew Rebus wouldn’t use to unblock the drains. And he’s ostentatiously supportive of trans rights, careful to use the right pronouns when his nephew sits down to a family dinner in a silk dress.
‘In my day, men were men and women were women,’ grumbles Gran (Ellie Haddington), a brief piece of dialogue chiefly remarkable for the absence of the F-word.
‘Maybe we should all try to be a bit more tolerant towards each other,’ Lennox lectures her. ‘Things are changing, this is the new world.’
Visiting a five-star hotel to pursue his inquiries, he seethes at the well-heeled guests, calling them ‘warthogs with their noses in the trough of privilege’. It must be tough to be so self-righteous and world-weary at the same time.
Speaking of well-heeled guests, a sex worker in five-inch stilettos tottered up the hotel stairs to a suite where a wealthy punter awaited.
Unlike ex-forces working class Rebus, Lennox is from a more Waitrose family (pictured: Dougray Scott)
Dougray Scott at the premiere of Crime at the Glasgow Film Theatre in November 2021
She proceeded to carve him up with a dagger. When room service arrived with the champagne, the place looked like an abattoir, and a second victim was last seen hanging upside down from a lamppost.
Between the wokery and the gore, it’s all quite joyless. The only reason to recommend this drama, which continues tonight, is its cast.
Joanna Vanderham is under-used as Lennox’s sidekick, DS Drummond, going home to her lonely flat, her cats and her unlimited supply of red wine.
Ken Stott (who once played Rebus) is the chief super, Laura Fraser is Lennox’s therapist, and trans actress Rebecca Root is his formerly male police partner, now a college lecturer called Lauren.
But Derek Riddell threatens to steal the show from the lot of them, as an oily politician who believes in using illegal immigrants as slave labour. He clearly hasn’t got the woke memo.
