The five best TV shows to watch over the summer holidays, including Rebus

Rebus (BBC1) They’re big shoes to fill, the Crocs of Charlie Fairhead, a Saturday night dependable in Casualty since the invention of anaesthetic. OK, that’s out of synch historically but you know what I mean. So who’s going to shore up the schedules? Why Scotland. First came the Dundee-set Traces and now here’s Rebus with Ian Rankin’s soor ploom sleuth back patrolling the mean streets of Edinburgh. I say back but the new series is a kind of prequel revealing the younger man, rather like Endeavour with Inspector Morse, although the character, played by Richard Rankin, is operating in the here and now. So more like a reimagining. Read the full review here

One Day (Netflix) I don’t think One Day would call itself impossibly cool, but that’s OK. Five million read and loved the novel by David Nicholls and just about everyone was disappointed by the movie. Apparently. For I come to Netflix’s version ignorant of both, but am well qualified to answer this question – what have they done to my city? Firstly, is it really Edinburgh? A party is in full swing, but the revellers look like the Bullingdon Club (Junior Section) on Tour. No one really dances like this unless on screen – arms twirling, pre-Raphaelite hair flying. Are they any Scots here at all? Oh, it’s an Edinburgh Uni bash, celebrating graduation day. A young man is comatose on the cobbles. He’s called Callum and so is probably Scottish. Read the full review here

Mr Bates vs the Post Office (ITV) In Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the latter are accused of being either stupid or cruel. This comes from the man heading the inquiry into why so many subpostmasters can’t balance their books. Bob Rutherford had been commissioned by the Post Office and, we’re to assume, is about to find in their favour, validating the organisation for laying charges of theft. Now, Rutherford is played by Ian Hart, an actor who’s impersonated John Lennon three times, Hitler once (once is enough), Lord Voldemort and both Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson – a fine and varied career, the famous and the notorious in almost equal measure. But I’m wondering, when his work’s done, if it might be the role as an auditor in what’s been called “the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history” which brings him the most pride. Read the full review here

Richard Rankin plays detective sergeant John Rebus in the new BBC TV series. Picture: Mark Mainz

Alice & Jack (Channel 4) “Love is the best thing we have, and maybe after stripping away all the bull**** it’s the only thing we have.” These are the opening words of Alice & Jack, spoken by Jack (Domhnall Gleeson), a biomedical researcher, who hooks up with Alice (Andrea Riseborough) via an app. She questions his job, how there will always be another auto-immune disease to investigate, and that as work it must have a “hazy reward calculus”. So what does she do? “I make money,” she says bluntly. Read the full review here

D Day 80: The Unheard Tapes (BBC2) Part of a cluster of anniversary programmes, D-Day 80: The Unheard Tapes plays in the background. It’s actors as invasion veterans – again – and, in a flip judgement, I decide this will struggle to stand out from all the accounts there have ever been. What’s wrong with the sound? It’s different for each man and occasionally gurgly. Later I watch from the beginning and am soon chastising myself. This is stunning television – stunningly simple, too. No Spielbergian special-effects are needed when words alone are this powerful. Read the full review here