Only watched two episodes up to now, loved them both. And quite important to me, Ian Rankin was involved as an Executive Producer and in interviews has explained the concept of it, I.e. it’s a younger Rebus but set in current times, and how happy he is with it and all the changes.
I really liked that it was actually filmed in Edinburgh, as opposed to so many programmes that claim to be set somewhere and patently are not.
Yes, there are differences from the books, e.g. where Rebus lives, Siobhan doesn’t appear until book five, Malcolm Fox doesn’t appear until very much later in the books. Michael and his life is very different from the books but I think what they’ve done with him worked well.
My only real complaint would be that this Rebus isn’t into his music, what he listens to is mentioned in every book, it’s an important part of his character. And a minor quibble - Cafferty isn’t scary enough, perhaps because the actor’s face is so well kent.