Karen Pirie

The series, set in the university town of St Andrews, on the Fife coast, opens in 1996. A Police woman stops a student who is covered in blood; he claims that he and two friends found a seriously injured woman in the grave yard of the cathedral. When she gets there the woman is dead. The three students are detained but despite their somewhat implausible explanations there is no evidence that they committed the murder so they are released. Twenty five years later the case is still unsolved and after a 'true crime' podcaster uses it as an example of the police not caring about women the case is reopened. Wanting a woman to lead the reinvestigation they turn to DS Karen Pirie. She is teamed with DC Jason Murray. The case will see them talking to the trio of students again as well as to the victim's brothers, one of whom has a propensity for violence. As the story progresses various secrets are exposed and alibis broken; we also learn more about the victim.

When I sat down to watch this I expected it to be a standard ITV Sunday night mystery that would be wrapped up in one two hour episode; as the end of the first episode approached it was clear that wouldn't be the case. Thoroughly gripped I was concerned that I'd now have to wait a week between episodes but thankfully all three are available on ITV Hub so I could enjoy the series over three nights. The story got off to a great start before effectively introducing key characters; most obviously the eponymous DS Pirie. She is a solid leading character; making a refreshing change from the typical older character with some sort of emotional baggage. The story progresses nicely with the events of the present being intertwined with key events from 1996. The location is good; making a refreshing change from stories set in a big city while avoiding becoming a Scottish 'Morse' which could have happening in a famous university town. The acting is impressive; I particularly liked Lauren Lyle's performance as Pirie. On the strength of this story I hope we see more of DS Pirie.

It's a good drama that has a plot that holds up for me the whole season, and this does. A good script highlighted by the small touches and lack of speeches so that it actually sounded like people talking to each other and not speaking to move the plot along. A current trope of time shifting is here too, but relevant. The acting was also down to earth without anyone trying to steal scenes. The setting of St Andrews's will add to any drama, and if anything was under used, but still played a role. The actors have experience in unflashy tv dramas and with no "stars" it was a real ensemble production and much better for it...

Karen Pirie is an engaging, entertaining cold case drama of 3 episodes. Because the episodes are around 90 minutes each, it has the length of a standard 6 episode series. One way that British police procedurals surpass those from Hollywood, is that Brit cops tend to look like real people, rather than fashion models. I appreciate that. That said, throughout the series, I couldn't help but feel that Lauren Lyle as the main character was a bit of a miscast. It's not that her acting was bad; rather, her youthful, babyfaced look never quite worked for me in that role.

I also thought that her interactions with her male partners sometimes bordered on slapstick. Further, the series featured an acceptance of "fraternization" between cops that seemed a bit out of step with the current times.

These quibbles aside, I liked the series, and would watch a second season. As for the comments I've seen about the audio quality, it never bothered me, particularly because I close caption all Brit TV!

I don't get it, seems like most of the reviews are written by people who's first language is English and they say it's unintelligible, I personally didn't have any problem and English is my third language, didn't find any problems with sound nor anything else that would make it hard to hear or understand what actors were saying.

Also someone wrote that the main character is too young! Too young for what exactly? To be a good policeman, to be a policeman and a woman to be in charge, sounds like some old fart has written the review, who has some issues with young women being smart, in charge and being able to do their job..

Can't also agree that it was predictable, enjoyed it quite a lot.

It's nice to see a slow paced police drama that doesn't feel slow or boring. Thoroughly enjoyed it and hope there will be more.

All the cast were excellent and there was good character development between the leads.

It definitely feels like this could go further, and make a nice change from the tired shows like Vera.

I know there had been complaints about the sound quality on episode one, but we watched it on the ITV Hub and had no issues at all.

Not sure about this extended review format that IMDB are now insisting on. It's rather unnecessary and just means people who want to praise a show end up going on like this.