Tartan Noir is thriving but are we already starting to get weary?

The Herald Scotland

5 days ago

First up, BBC Scotland's award-winning re-boot of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels will return for a second series. Louise Thornton, the broadcaster's head of commissioning, describes herself as being 'blown away' by the audience response to season one and is promising to ensure the new series is 'must-see television'. Beyond that, the author himself is playing coy about what the new six-parter will bring us. 'Only screenwriter Gregory Burke knows what happens next,' says Sir Ian. Aye, right. Either way, it's good news.
Before we see Rebus 2.0, however, we can enjoy the return of Karen Pirie, creation of Sir Ian's fellow Fifer, Val McDermid. It has just returned to STV and sees the plucky Detective Inspector handed a cold case – the kidnapping in 1984 of oil heiress Catriona Grant and her two-year-old son, Adam, from outside a Fife chippie. Again, good news. As played by Lauren Lyle, Pirie is one of the most watchable TV detectives so hers is a welcome return. So too the Fife setting.
Finally to Shetland. Filming on season 10 of the series began in April and the smart money says an autumn transmission is most likely, given the previous release dates. Ashley Jensen returns as DI Ruth Calder while among those joining the cast are two well-known Scottish actors – Clive Russell and Ellie Haddington, best known for her roles in Motherland and Guilt – and Samuel Anderson, who plays Mal in Motherland spin-off Amandaland.
Read more from Barry Didcock:
No Jimmy Perez, of course, Douglas Henshall having bailed after season seven. But fans of Ann Cleeves's original novels might like to know he is returning in literary form – though just not to [[Shetland]] itself. Cleeves's new novel The Killing Stones finds Jimmy living in Orkney where he becomes involved in the investigation into the death of his old friend Archie Stout, murdered on his native Westray using a Neolithic stone. It will be published on October 7.
But not everything is rosy in Scotland's crime drama garden. Sticking with fictional detectives and ending on a less salutary note, John Niven's latest novel, The Fathers, features as a central character a TV writer and denizen of Glasgow's West End who made his pile creating and writing a long-running crime drama titled McCallister. It sees a hard-bitten Glasgow detective transplanted to the Highlands and functions as a sort of Taggart-meets-Local Hero hybrid.
Niven's character, Dan, is pretty jaundiced about McCallister and wants to kill the series. Speaking to the author recently I asked him if Dan's feelings reflect his own in any way. Is Scottish TV crime drama moribund, boring, safe? Where, for example, are the adaptations of novels by Chris Brookmyre, Liam McIlvanney, Louise Welsh or Alan Parks? Given the number of great crime writers we have, does he think perhaps we are actually not getting the shows we deserve?
'It seems so, yeah,' he told me. 'Especially in Scotland where you get so many fabulous authors… There's so many brilliant writers in that space that you'd think the TV screen should be saturated with really brilliant, edgy noir crime stuff. But it's not the case.'
He added: 'I wouldn't name names, but I work a lot in the screenwriting space and I've had two or three in recent years where a producer will option a book and hire me to write a pilot and it will go so far down the line and then it always gets spiked at the last minute. It doesn't happen. One begins to weary.'
The path from page to screen leaves many edgier projects by the wayside, it seems. Money is an issue, but ultimately it's the viewers' loss. How long before we too begin to weary?
Superbams
He has helmed several superhero films, written two live-action Scooby Doo movies and created something called Lollipop Chainsaw, a 'hack-and-slash' video game – so it's fair to say you'll search James Gunn's filmography in vain for even a sniff of anything as avowedly political as Spike Lee, Ken Loach or Andrea Arnold might turn out. And yet through the unlikely medium of yet another Superman reboot, the American director has set the cat among the pigeons – or perhaps that should be the feral, anti-woke moggy among the doves.
Interviewed recently about the new film, which stars relative unknowns David Corenswet as Clark Kent and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Gunn said: 'Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country… but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.'
James Gunn (right) on the set of Superman (Image: Warner Bros) Cue howls of derision from somewhere off to the right, who saw in his comments a criticism of recent migrant round-ups by US Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 'We don't go to the movie theater [sic] to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us,' said swivel-eyed MAGA loyalist Kellyanne Conway, who served in Donald Trump's chaotic first administration. Meanwhile Fox News has taken to calling the film 'Superwoke' while anchor Jesse Watters has joked that 'Superman is fighting for truth, justice and your preferred pronouns.'
As an aside, we've already had a flavour of this on our side of the Pond, though in typically British fashion our superhero-as-political-emblem wears a blue duffle coat, a battered red sou'wester hat and eats marmalade sandwiches. Yup, Paddington.
So can Superman fly above politics? The New York Times asked that very question, though the answer seems obvious by now. Not a chance. Instead, the paper wrote, Gunn's comments have had the effect of 'thrusting the summer popcorn movie into an Earthbound culture war.'
Mind you, the film is absolutely killing it at the box office – it had hit £300 million by its second weekend – so the culture wars haven't hurt it financially. On the whole the reviews have been good too, though don't expect more of the same when Gunn-produced follow-up Supergirl hits the cinemas in 2026. Speaking about his casting of Australian actress Millie Alcock as Supergirl, he recalled a conversation between himself and fellow producer Peter Safran. 'He's like: 'Well, who would you see as Supergirl?' I said: 'You see the House Of The Dragon?' Who was that little blonde girl on that?''
Sounds like it's back to business as usual, then. Little blonde girl? The MAGA right will love it.
And finally
The Herald's theatre critic Neil Cooper runs his eye over the tangled history of John Buchan's fabulous adventure novel The Thirty-Nine Steps as he enjoys a new Pitlochry Festival Theatre production by director Ben Occhipinti. The 1915 novel was originally adapted for film by Hitchcock in 1935, his version was re-shot by Ralph Thomas in 1959 and Occhipinti's take on it uses Patrick Barlow's 2005 adaption, which turns it into a four-hander. With clowns. 'An irreverent hybrid,' is Neil's take.
He also watched a revival of Paul Hendy's West End hit The Last Laugh at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow, which pitches Tommy Cooper, Bob Monkhouse and Eric Morecambe into a dressing room together – what could possibly go wrong? Then it was to a very appropriate setting for Davie Carswell's stage version of Irvine Welsh's Porno, the 2002 sequel to Trainspotting – Leith Theatre in Edinburgh.
Finally to music, where at Dunfermline's Alhambra [[Theatre]] Teddy Jamieson enjoyed a performance by the evergreen Lulu (though she was dressed in white and diamanté on this occasion). That soulful, rasping, rowdy voice with which she announced herself to the world as a young teenager with the single Shout back in 1964 remains intact,' is his verdict as she runs through a set featuring all the old favourites with sister Edwina on backing vocals.