Stephen Fry has been cast as an art expert who gets mixed up with an underworld heist in a new film based on a novel by Rebus writer Ian Rankin.

The actor and presenter will play Professor Gissing in ITV1's Doors Open, which is set in Rankin's home town of Edinburgh.

Fry said: "I picked up Ian Rankin's breathless and ingenious thriller Doors Open at an airport a year or so back and as I read I just knew it would make a thrilling, charming and original TV drama."

Rankin's crime novels about Detective Inspector John Rebus are regulars on the bestseller lists.

Filming starts in Edinburgh this month.