Scottish actor Sharon Small is starring in BBC drama Nightsleeper, about a high-speed runaway train. She plays a Tory minister trapped on a “hackjacked” Glasgow to London service that is hurtling towards disaster.

But she still looks back fondly on making her TV debut in Taggart back in 1994 when she played a woman who discovers her husband isn’t the father of their child after an IVF mix-up. The police get involved after it emerges the doctor at the centre of the scandal has deliberately swapped the sperm of would-be fathers for his own during the insemination process.

“It was based on a true story,” she says. “I think we might have been the first who told that story.”

This year saw a reboot of detective series Rebus air on BBC and there has been a lot of whispers about the potential to reprise Taggart too. She'd love to see it return.


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“You have a brand you can resell. Ultimately, if it was set up with the right person, yeah, of course you can.

“You can tell Glasgow stories. Taggart did really well in encompassing all the aspects of Glasgow. It went into the affluent and the darker side. You can always reboot something.”

Among the ideas mooted is to revive Taggart with a woman in the titular role, with one suggestion that this could be the daughter of the character played by the late Mark McManus, who has followed in her father’s footsteps as a police detective.

"I have had lots of practice playing cops, so I would love to be put up for it," she laughs. “Bring it on. I could look like her, sort of, right?”