It must be hellish coming up with fresh ideas for a police procedural – and personally I don’t think there have been any really great British TV cop shows since Happy Valley and Scott & Bailey (both created by the peerless Sally Wainwright). But Karen Pirie writer Emer Kenny has an advantage over many – she is adapting plots and characters already dreamed up by the acclaimed Scottish crime writer Val McDermid. The second series is based on her 2008 novel A Darker Domain.
This is another cold case for the eponymous detective – the 1984 gunpoint kidnapping of heiress Cat Grant (Julia Brown) and her two-year-old son outside a Fife chippy. They’ve not been seen since, although Cat’s car key has recently turned up in the possession of a drug dealer whose bullet-ridden corpse has just been retrieved from a nearby quarry.
The three-part series unfolds on twin timelines as we follow Cat’s unwise affair with a nightclub bouncer, the ransom notes written with one of those Dymo label makers so popular in the 70s and 80s, and sent to Cat’s father, the filthy rich oil magnate Sir Broderick Grant (played by James Cosmo in the later timeframe). The kidnappers style themselves the Anarchist Covenant of Scotland.
Julia Brown as Cat Grant (Photo: Mark Mainz/ITV/World Productions)In the present day, the newly promoted Karen (Lauren Lyle) has personal matters to contend with – when to reveal her amorous relationship with colleague DS Phil Parhatka (Zach Wyatt), along with some of the more unevolved attitudes of her male superiors. There’s none of the knuckle-dragging sexism of Prime Suspect, but certain attitudes still linger. Upon employing a new female colleague, for example, her boss remarks that “it might be good for you lot [ie women] to send the ladder back down”.
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In any case, the recruitment turns out to be double-edged, the boss coercing this new colleague, DC Isla Stark (Saskia Ashdown), into spying on Karen and the team. These again include DC Jason “Mint” Murray (Chris Jenks), whose role partly seems to consist of posing questions that I already want to ask. Also returning is the antagonistic forensics bod with the unlikely name of River Wilde (is that a playful reference to the Meryl Streep 1995 action movie?).
In any case, Emer Kenny has written the role for herself – and why not? It’s surely one of the perks of being an actor-screenwriter.
Emer Kenny as River Wilde and Lauren Lyle as Karen Pirie (Photo: Mark Mainz/ITV/World Productions)The opening credit sequence, with its news footage of striking miners, makes it clear that 1984 industrial action has something to do with the kidnapping. And anyone searching for clues may have clocked Cat’s remark while looking out to sea at some oil rigs, that “they are almost beautiful… if you don’t know what they are”. Her sympathies seemingly don’t align then with her oil tycoon father. There are also some Glasgow gangsters involved in a storyline that refreshingly plays out over three 90-minute episodes instead of dragging it out of six hourly chunks.
But the star attraction of Karen Pirie is, well, Karen Pirie. With her almost trademark blonde bob, Lyle’s detective is relatable, surprisingly normal and engagingly un-hard-bitten for a TV cop. With her Doc Martens and cuffed jeans, she certainly doesn’t go in for power dressing, and keeps her hands in her pockets while visiting Sir Broderick after her boss had advised her to “bend the knee”.
The only surprise is that it took ITV so long to make this sequel to a series that was a hit with both viewers and critics in 2022. This new one looks set to follow suit.
‘Karen Pirie’ continues next Sunday at 8pm on ITV1
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