18-07-2025
ITV's thrilling crime drama Karen Pirie is back. Here's why the stars found it 'daunting'
Karen Pirie is back on the case as the Scottish detective returns for her toughest case yet in series 2 of the ITV police drama, and while the return was exciting for star Lauren Lyle and creator Emer Kenny they tell Yahoo UK how it felt like a completely different experience this time around.
"I was nervous that I couldn't be funny again," Lyle admits of returning to the title role. "And I was worried about whether it would work again, that's like second album worry. But I think the minute I put on the bum bag and strapped it around my waist, put the Doc Martins back on, it all just fell straight back into place.
"And I also think it's testament to the writing, I've been saying [to Emer] it's quite delicious that you must have been able to write for me now and being able to write Karen with my voice and the way I've been doing it in mind, sort of playing to strengths and the comedy feeling being natural to what I like to do.
"It's been really fun and I think also testament to the foundations we put in at the beginning in season 1, being strong. I just start marching about again and so that worked."
The second series finds Karen faced with a puzzling cold case involving the disappearance of billionaire heiress Katrina Graham and her child four decades earlier. A possible new lead gives Karen the chance to reopen the case and find answers for her family, once and for all.
Kenny, who adapts Val McDermid's books for the screen, says she felt the pressure of returning to the second series because of the success of the first: "I was daunted because it was my first time lead writing a show and it was Lauren's first time as the lead, so there was this kind of mad, magic excitement that we had and we both really gave it everything we had, and I put a lot of my personal feelings about how it felt to be doing that for the first time in the story.
"Karen's on a big case for the first time, so it really felt like everything we wanted to express. And so coming back to the show, you just hope that you can bring that same energy, and actually it was a completely different experience, and we felt really different. But the story really lends itself to that; it's a completely different case.
"It's a kidnap case, it's not a murder — although there is a body at the heart of the show. And I think that lends itself to be a bit bigger, a bit more epic. There are a lot of bigger twists and hooks that I think hopefully everyone will enjoy."
The writer took inspiration from her own life to inform the narrative she put to paper, as she goes on: "I had just had a baby when I started writing this, I was writing when he was 12 weeks old and so a lot of my protective, new mother emotions went into how I wrote her and I found that it was just a new thing to add to my writing."
For Lyle, it was interesting to try and do something different with Karen, because she's no longer the same kind of person she was to begin with.
"I loved that she started as this reluctant boss, and now she's still this sort of weird late 20s woman who shouldn't probably be there, but is there and has always wanted it," Lyle reflects. "Emer and I, we often talk about how when we got to this place of a bit of success, and if it gets really hard and it's quite intense, we go 'we have prayed for this, we have prayed for this, so we cannot complain.'
"And I feel like Karen's in that place where she's always wanted this but doesn't quite know what to do with it, and it's really fun to let that play out and just getting to boss around some men all the time and playing off loads of people that are taller than you."
"I think that's what sets the show apart," the Outlander star adds: "Is that often you see these shows are centred around detectives and they're quite often middle-aged men. He's got a drinking problem and hates his life and hates his job, whereas Karen loves her job and enjoys her life.
"She's a 20-odd-year-old girl who's going to the pub with her boyfriend but is having to be a normal girl navigating that while also dealing with this insane pressure of being the boss where you kind of look at her and think she shouldn't be, and she doesn't think she should be."
It was also an aspect of the character that Kenny wanted to highlight in series 2: "In the first season, she was kind of an underestimated newbie to the team, and she really proved herself.
"So the second season, she's coming off a bittersweet success, and she's given a massive new case that has international renown, so there's a lot more pressure on her. But she has a lot more authority, so she's kind of grappling with that as well."
The show not only focuses on the case at hand, though, the drama also centres on Karen and her life outside of the police, which is an important distinction that Kenny wanted to include. And it was something that Lyle also appreciated: "Often with detective shows you're watching a case unfold, and that's sort of the plot.
"Whereas, with this, you're really falling in love with the characters and with Karen, and the steps that she takes in her love life and her home life. It was cathartic at times, there was things happening in my personal life that wove into the show occasionally, and I loved it."
For both Lyle and Kenny, Karen Pirie has been a vehicle they needed to grow their respective crafts and become comfortable and confident with them.
Lyle shares: "I really enjoyed having to sort of grow up with the first season, I really felt like I was throwing my own part as number 1. You do sort of set the tone, and I hadn't done that before. I'd learned from all the other number ones that I'd watched on other jobs and picked the bits that I wanted — it really felt like you were throwing your own party, you just wanted everyone to have a good time.
"And the second series was quite nice, we felt settled that we had a good time and that we'd set a great tone and it was a good show. You didn't have to try so hard to get people excited, people just were excited. So there was a lovely [atmosphere], and it felt a bit more grown up."
"I really became a lot more confident during the first series," Kenny concurs. "Because I learned that I knew what I was doing and I think there was a lot of validation when the show came out and people got what I was trying to do, they connected with Karen and the show in general.
"So the second time around I didn't want to change anything, but I did want to enjoy it more. Like just worry less about the reception and just be in the moment because the making of the thing is really joyful, and exciting, and brilliant.
"And so I think I was a little bit less fearful and I think it actually made me more confident and ambitious because I wasn't so worried about it."
The hope, of course, is that audiences are as drawn to the crime drama's second series as they were with the first. Kenny admits she "felt huge relief" when series one became a hit "because [she] had thought about nothing else" for months, even going so far as waking in the middle of the night thinking about the show and where it could go next.
"It was just an extreme relief that people liked what we'd spent so long and put so much effort into," she says, adding: "I hope that the same audience comes back and we deliver to them a show that is just as good, and better, more epic and more ambitious and more filmic, and more exhilarating. I just wanna make them all happy."
One thing that Lyle found funny was that viewers would often tell her they watched the series with no expectation, only to realise how good it was. She hopes that now that won't be the case: "I do hope that people come to it having heard how good the first one was and are excited to watch the second one. It's one of those things that you are by the water cooler at work, and everyone's recommending it, that's like a dream for [us]."
Lyle continues: "It makes me really giddy when you hear people saying that they watch it, I'm still a bit in disbelief when it happens. When I used to get stopped on the street it would be be for Outlander, and now it's quite nice to be like 'what's it for Karen Pirie?'"
If audiences enjoy it as much as the cast and crew do then they are ready and willing to return and bring more of McDermid's books to life. Kenny says: "Val has just written another book so there's absolutely scope for more Karen Pirie, and ITV really love the show so they're very keen for it to run and run if the audience love it. It's just about whether it's received in the way that it has been.
"So everyone watch it! If people want it, we'll give the people what they want."
Karen Pirie premieres on ITV1 on Sunday, 20 July at 9pm.
