Fry is set to play Rankin's Professor Gissing

Stephen Fry has been cast as an art expert who gets mixed up in an underworld heist in a new TV 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. I also adored the character of Professor Gissing and a shamefully vain part of me refused to see anyone else in the role. I am so thrilled that ITV were of the same opinion".

The story follows self-made millionaire Mike Mackenzie, played by Dougie Henshall, who attempts to swap a series of priceless masterpieces with forgeries.

Filming starts in the Scottish capital later this month.

Rankin's crime novels about Detective Inspector John Rebus are regulars on the best-seller lists and have been filmed for television with first John Hannah and then Ken Stott playing the detective.