Old pals play it by the books

WHEN screen writer James Mavor first met Ian Rankin in 1978, they were both studying English Literature at Edinburgh University. At that point, Inspector Rebus had yet to sink his first pint in the Oxford Bar of his creator's imagination and it was poetry rather than novels which were the young Rankin's first creative outlet.

Happily, his chum Mavor was co-editing a literary fanzine called Sharp Edges and he published a couple of Rankin's poems. "They were brooding, bedsit poems," recalls Mavor. "Early Smiths kind of stuff."

Perhaps fortunately, Sharp Edges folded after just a couple of issues and Rankin's early poems were lost to the wider world. Although Mavor and Rankin have remained friends since, it was nearly 30 years before the pair would work together again and the results, a surreal crime drama called Reichenbach Falls, are about to be broadcast as part of BBC Four's fifth birthday celebrations.

Written by Mavor and based on an idea by Rankin, Reichenbach Falls is a multi-layered detective tale that plays with the conventions of the genre before morphing into a mind-bending mystery that weaves fact with fiction and links Edinburgh's past with the city's present.

Alec Newman plays Jim Buchan, who lives up to the trope of the hard-drinking, cynical copper. Alastair Mackenzie is Jack Harvey, a successful crime novelist who just happens to be named after one of Rankin's pseudonyms. Formerly the best of friends, the pair come to loathe one another after Harvey runs off with Buchan's wife Clara, played by Laura Fraser.

Along with the fast-moving plot, Edinburgh literary references come thick and fast. The works of Arthur Conan Doyle play a significant role, as does Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll And Hyde. Although the detective isn't mentioned, Rebus fans will have plenty of clues to spot and there is even mention of one Muriel Spark. In a very postmodern fashion, Rankin even plays a cameo role in a scene set at the launch of Jack Harvey's latest book.

"Reichenbach Falls started with Ian and I talking about Edinburgh, about it being the world's first City of Literature and its literary past," says Mavor, sitting in his Edinburgh home which is adjacent to one of Robert Louis Stevenson's former residences.

"Ian's novels use real places and sometimes real people and I find the way that fiction and fact can overlap very interesting. Fact-based television or reality television is already nudging fiction and as a devoted fictionaliser that seemed like fertile ground to root Reichenbach Falls in. "I also wanted to look at how best selling novelists feel about their successful characters, whether they be Inspector Rebus or Sherlock Holmes."

While Mavor is trailing the footsteps that Edinburgh's historic writers have left, he is also following in his own family's tradition. His father was a playwright and later worked for the Scottish Arts Council. His grandfather, under the pseudonym James Bridie, was a prolific playwright who helped found the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow, while his own plays enjoyed success in Scotland and in London's West End. "It's a bit like having a family trade," says Mavor of his family's artistic leanings. "Had they been plumbers maybe I would have been a plumber. It meant that being a writer was not unthinkable as it might be for many people."

Although both his father and grandfather trained in medicine, it was the arts that formed the background thrum to Mavor's childhood. Mavor's father wrote a piece called A Private Matter which played a significant part in his son deciding that he would write for a living.

The play starred Derek Fowlds who would go on to be known as a serious actor but, at that time, was best known as being the straight man to Basil Brush. Mavor jnr saw the play at Edinburgh's Lyceum.

"The first half climaxed with Derek stripping naked," he recalls. "The crowd were all gasping and shouting, 'Boom Boom! Basil's got his brush out!' I thought that was very cool and, as my Dad had done, I wanted to be able to write something that would shock or excite people."

Mavor takes a certain pride in the fact that until he took a part-time position lecturing at the Screen Academy Scotland last August, he had never had a nine to five job. Instead his CV lists stints writing for Monarch Of The Glen, Take The High Road, Red Caps and The Bill. He also wrote Split Second, a 1999 TV film starring Clive Owen.

"What I've tried to do in what I laughingly called my career is oscillate between jobbing paid work writing for drama series or soaps with trying to develop and make original work like Reichenbach Falls," he says.

At present, he has various irons in the fire. Perhaps most notable is a hush-hush film project with Rankin once the novelist has finished the final Rebus story.

"That will take some time," he says, before thinking twice and adding: "Well, he'll probably knock it off in a couple of weeks. He is a terrifyingly creative writer."

Reichenbach Falls, BBC4, Thursday, 9pm