Inspector Banks..... not a patch on the books , too many liberties with the storylines. Stephen Tompkinson seems wrong for the part. :-\
Just watching that now Dick, I haven't read the books yet. I read all of Ian Rankins books about Rebus but thought the TV serial was awful both of the actors they used to play him were way off.
Very interesting interview with Ian Rankin by Alan Yentob on the "Imagine" programme. Although he has the DVDs he has never watched a single episode. Does not want his concept of Rebus coloured by any actor playing the part. He suggests this is what happened to Colin Dexter with Morse. Of course, the later Morse was very much written for television. I must confess, John Thaw's Morse is very much my image of the fictional character. I strongly feel the same about John Mortimer's Rumpole. He will always be Leo McKern.
Even though I have read all the books I never had a particular Rebus picture, Have hardly watched any TV episodes but do recognise that John Hannah was totally wrong. Ken Stott was far better but the woman who played Siobhan Clarke with Stott was just way off. I am sure that if I went into The Ox (Oxford Bar, Young Street, Edinburgh) and saw Ian Rankin I would think "There's Rebus". It is the author himself who is my almost image of Rebus.
Ian Rankin was, of course, born locally in Fife. I have been to The Ox once - with Terry Jones of Monty Python who was in Edinburgh for a book signing. Terry was after a pint of Deuchars.
I have read quite a few of the Inspector Banks books but never developed a clear image there. I tend not to watch novels of this genre when they are turned into television. As Ian Rankin has said, it is ridiculous by how much they compress a book over which he has sweated cobs to get it within the extremely limited attention span of the bulk of the audience at which modern televison is aiming. Dumbing down is an understatement.
I suppose I am very much of the contention that novels of any genre are written to be read. They can never be faithfully reproduced by any other medium, particularly the extremely light weight intellectually modern television.
