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Scotsman
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
'You get awards and have that second album fear' - Lauren Lyle is back as TV detective Karen Pirie
With a promotion and a tangled life work balance, the young detective has a new cold case mystery that takes us back to Scotland's Miners' Strike struggles. Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... 'The minute you put the bumbag on it's like 'oh we're back!' says Lauren Lyle, star of Karen Pirie, ITV's crime drama set in Fife, back for season two this month with a new cold case series to solve. 'And The Doc Martens. I just start marching about everywhere. The Carhartt trousers with the belt, the Fred Perry polo shirt with a popped collar... And the haircut. Straight away, when I put the fringe in, it's like 'we're back!' Lauren Lyle as the Fife detective, Karen Pirie, who is back in a new series. | ITV Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The double BAFTA Scotland winner takes the lead once more in one of ITV's most-watched dramas of 2022, in three new 120-minute episodes that see the detective investigating an unsolved kidnapping that takes us back to the dark days of the Miners' Strike of 1984. When a man's body is discovered in the present day, secrets are revealed and the past comes to life. With Karen promoted to Detective Inspector, the series written by Emer Kenny and executive produced by Simon Heath and Emma Luffingham at World Productions, Emer Kenny and Val McDermid, opens with Pirie's team in the thick of a present day mystery with its roots in the past. Back on board are sidekick DC Jason 'Mint' Murray (Chris Jenks) and DS Phil Parhatka (Zach Wyatt), Emer Kenny as River Wilde and Rakhee Thakrar as podcaster Bel Richmond and new cast members including James Cosmo and Saskia Ashdown as DC Isla Stark. Today Lyle, who hails from Glasgow, is Zooming from her London home where she's sweltering in the heatwave, a Dyson fan blasting through her flat where the door is open to her balcony, causing her to break off occasionally to make sure her ginger cat hasn't gone kamikaze. Despite the temperature, like Pirie, the actors is a breath of fresh air, which might explain why the launch episode of season one won an audience of 6.6 million viewers, and the series averaged 5.9m across each episode. It also won Lyle BAFTA Scotland Awards for Best Actress in a Series and Favourite Scot on Screen. Lauren Lyle and Cesar Domboy in Outlander | STARZ Why does Lyle think Karen Pirie is so popular? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Because often we see detective shows and it's a middle aged man who has a drinking problem, hates his job, is going home to a divorce, and that is just not what she is at all. 'She's really funny. She loves her job, she's good at it. I think people enjoy that. The way she speaks to her bosses as well. People come up to me and say 'I wish I was brave enough to say that to my boss'. I think it's a nice look into a young person at work. You don't see twentysomethings, early thirtysomethings, and what it's like to be a young person in a job where you've really got to grit your teeth through some things and do as you're told - and not want to do as you're told,' she laughs. 'Also we don't just get a case, you're getting the whole life of this woman, especially in Season Two. She's dealing with problems with her boyfriend, and just wants to go to the pub and hang out with her friends. Which is what I want to do,' she laughs. 'She fancies a boy at work and they're not allowed to tell anyone, so what do you do? It is so relatable and many people go through dealing with that and I don't think we get to see it very often. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Because each episode is two hours of television you get so much room to breathe and Emer [Kenny] Trojan horses in a young woman, with humour and character, just trying to live her life.' The double timeline element of the plot takes the viewer back to the 1980s, a time before Pirie and Lyle were born, to the era of Margaret Thatcher and the Miners' Strike, a time of seismic political and social change and events that changed the social and physical landscape for ever. 'Mint says 'we've all seen Billy Elliot' - but I think people haven't seen [on screen] what actually happened in Scotland and what a horrible impact that had, how people were destitute. You see it in the North of England, but it happened in Scotland as well. Lauren Lyle as Karen Pirie, Saskia Ashdown as DC Isla Ray and Chris Jenks as DC Jason Murray in Karen Pirie. | ITV 'And it's interesting to think about how much has not changed, like the way Scotland is used for its oil. It's interesting to see that's something that's always gone on and not a lot's changed. Scotland's quite a politically left, activist country and I love that we're putting that on display because it's often seen as a forward thinking country in the world and it's nice to delve into parts of that and how people have really suffered for good things here.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Karen Pirie also brought Lyle the chance to work at home in Scotland, after 13 years living in London. 'I'm so proud to be from there and also to be doing work that puts it on an international I've worked around Scotland more I think I'm going to get myself a place I can always come home to. Every time I come home and hear the accents I think this is where I'm from, this is me. To go home and hear a Scottish accent warms your bones.' Being promoted to inspector brings Pirie new responsibilities and pressures. How does Lyle think she copes with her new role? 'She's quite a reluctant new boss. She's always wanted this authority, to tell everyone what to do and call all the shots and now she's got it she really doesn't know what to do with it. She's really got to step up. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I think that's exactly what happens. As an actor too, you're really looking for the leading role, the big job and then you get it and you're like ' oh my god, now I've got to do it, what am I going to do? 'I really understood how intimidating it can be. It was intimidating to stand in front of a whole room of 30 extras who are supposed to be your team, all men and older than you and tell them what to do. There is something about leading a show and having to stay quite true to your opinions and thoughts and not doubt yourself just because you might be getting some looks around 'do you know what you're talking about?' 'I've certainly experienced in my life and my career where I've been patronised because I look younger. And I'm hugged more, like I'll watch two men have a handshake and then I'll get a hug. It's so strange the way women are treated when in positions of power. People kind of don't know what to do with it and get very awkward with it.' Not least Pirie's exasperated boss, DI Lees, played by Steve John Shepherd, who describes her as 'blunt, blinkered, obsessive, rude and brilliant'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Yep, that's it, blunt to a fault, rude, but brilliant. That's what the bosses don't understand. Her boss is awkward with her and doesn't know what to do with her sometimes, and she doesn't know what to do with him either. Either way, Pirie will do what she wants. 'Karen knows she's going to have to break some rules, but she loves her job and really is doing it for the best reasons. She's not just trying to break rules because she doesn't care, it's a lot more three-dimensional. She does care, almost too much, so she'll do all she can for the case and the victims to her own detriment. 'It's not about breaking the rules just to be badass, it's breaking the rules because that's the only way to do the right thing. Lauren Lyle as Karen Pirie and Chris Jenks as DC Jason Murray in ITV's Karen Pirie. | ITV 'Also she's having to deal with a relationship at work where she's just young and fancies her boyfriend and wants to kiss him but isn't allowed to? I know lots of people that deal with that exact issue, and I love showing that on screen. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I just don't see the show as a detective show. I see it as a character study of this woman that's trying to do a job that's really high-powered and pressured and also trying to go to the pub on Friday.' While Pirie grapples with her new role, for Lyle, was playing the lead easier second time around? 'I was worried because you get awards and have that second album fear. But there were things I was less worried about, for example the police jargon, which I slipped back into. 'And the first series there was so much adrenaline because we'd all just come out of COVID and it was my first time leading a show and being part of something brand new is so exciting. Season Two, it's like woah, we've got to do that again, and elevate it. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It felt like a bigger show, like there was more money behind it, more pressure, we're going further afield and doing more action. So it felt bigger, and more intense, and we had to step up to that. 'But Season One because we'd just come out of COVID we worked and also partied and this time, with new cast as well, I wanted everyone to have a good time, so I strived to have a fun set, get ice-cream vans and doughnuts on Fridays, which was great. I just want to have a good time at work as well. I want it to be a show where all the crew want to come back.' Speaking of which, does she think there will be another series, given there are several of Val McDermid's Karen Pirie books to inspire the writers. 'I hope so. I think everyone wants to do another one.' In terms of new cast members, including Saskia Ashdown, James Cosmo, Frances Tomelty, John Michie, Mark Rowley, James Fleet, and Julia Brown, what was it like working with James Cosmo? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Aww, what an absolute babe. I was nervous. I was like 'he's going to be intimidating'. He's done so much work and has a lot of gravitas, and the minute you go and say hello to him, he turns round and goes 'hellooo! And he's got the smileyest teddy bear way and he'll talk to you about any job he's done and he's not precious at all. He just knows exactly what and who he is. And he's very funny, very funny.' Until the camera rolls and scary and intimidating is called for… 'There was a scene where the director went to him and said really, really give it to her this time, really make her shit herself, because you're powerful, and I didn't know he'd been told to do that, and he was right in at me and I was like 'oh my god Karen's being torn apart here'. It was brilliant.' Inspired by the Val McDermid books and written by Emer Kenny, what difference does it make that it has a strong female slant? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Yes, the books are written by Val [McDermid] who sold the rights and Emer Kenny writes the show. It makes a big difference because Karen is written as a woman who actually knows what it's like to be scared walking home at night. Her male counterparts, bosses, the men, Phil her boyfriend, don't really have that same fear in the same way. Karen, Lauren, knows what that feels like and Karen therefore cares so much more. Emer writes it from a place of really understanding those things. 'And that she screams and shouts in the car when she's frustrated and does all that, I love that we see that because I do that, and I think a lot of women do and you never see it. We never see that's how people release frustration and it makes me really proud that we show it and let that breathe, her female rage.' 'Also Emer will take inspiration from things going on in our personal lives and weave it in a little bit, so it's really relatable.' Lauren Lyle stars as the eponymous Karen Pirie in the new season of the detective drama set in Fife. | Pip Bourdillon As well as working on Karen Pirie, Lyle spent two months filming a new six-part series in New Zealand at the beginning of this year, for BBC Scotland and Sky New Zealand Originals. Called The Ridge, she stars as a Scot who arrives in New Zealand and is drawn into a web of secrets and lies. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'The Ridge is a very strange, psychological kind of horror at times, a thriller. Jay Ryan who is a big Kiwi actor and I lead it and I play a bit of a psychopath and drug addict, a bit of a crazy person. I'm an anaesthetist who is getting in trouble at work so runs away to New Zealand to my estranged sister's wedding. But the sister goes missing and turns up dead - that's not a spoiler! - and I go on the hunt for what happened. I'm also embroiled with this very Succession-type family and lots of bad things happen. So it's fun, but also very intense. It's a really good show and really wild. 'We stayed in Auckland and filmed at all these incredible locations all around the North Island, with amazing beaches, which was wonderful.' Lyle has also been on our screens recently in the acclaimed Toxic Town (Netflix) and The Bombing of Pan Am 103 ( BBC and Netflix) and appeared in Saoirse Ronan and Jack Lowden's feature film The Outrun, opposite Sean Bean in Broken and in BBC's Vigil. Her big TV break came in Starz's Outlander as Marsali MacKimmie Fraser, after she learned her trade on the job in various acting roles rather than at drama school after heading for London at 19. What is it she looks for in a role? 'It's not necessarily about what the role is, it's about who are the really cool people to work with? Toxic Town I knew I'd be working with Rory Kinnear and Aimee Lou Wood, and all these absolutely unbelievable actors, from Skins, Game of Thrones, Sex Education. Everyone was playing something kind of fun, and also I liked playing a posh person. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Outlander was just a huge turning point for me in my career, an absolute no-brainer to say yes. Marsali was the daughter of the baddie as well which I loved, something spicy. And The Outrun, again it was Saoirse Ronan and Jack Lowden, so… 'They said we're writing a film and would like to write a part for you in it. I was like, what Saoirse Ronan and Jack Lowden like my work, that's crazy. They'd seen me in Vigil and Outlander so ended up writing me into The Outrun. Obviously you're never going to say no to that. 'It was heavily improvised as well and I loved the idea of being so creative and really working my muscles there. It's doing theatre on camera, so I loved that.' 'I would really like to do something a bit like Succession, really posh people being absolutely horrible to each other all the time. I really want to do more film, accents and someone different to myself. And maybe something funny next, because a lot of what I've been doing is quite dark and when I've been doing Karen I loved being funny.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad With a growing list of credits, is there any advice she follows as she looks forward to the next challenge on the horizon? 'I think the biggest thing that changed the way I approached the world and being an actor was not putting so much weight into having to be everything. The minute I started going to the pub more, seeing my friends and making time for a holiday and giving up on the day a little bit, everything changed. Finding real life to live has made me a much better actor and a more interesting and happier person. 'I went so hard when I started and didn't have a lot of fun and now that I've made a lot more time for fun - if that's just going round the corner and sitting outside with mates - it's changed my life.'
ITV News
30-06-2025
- Politics
- ITV News
Northumbria Police expresses 'embarrassment' after destroying Miners' Strike files, says MP
An MP says Northumbria Police 'expressed their professional embarrassment' when he met with the force after it emerged they had destroyed records relating to the Miners' Strike and the 'Battle of Orgreave'. Labour's Ian Lavery, MP for Blyth & Ashington, posted on social media on Monday (30 June) to say he had met with representatives of the force. The meeting follows the revelation last week that Northumbria Police had disposed of two boxes containing data relating to its involvement in the year-long strike of 1984 and violence that erupted outside a coking plant in South Yorkshire. Northumbria Police has confirmed it is investigating the circumstances surrounding its destruction. Writing on X, Mr Lavery said" "On Friday afternoon I met with senior representatives of Northumbria Police having written to them following the discovery that files relating to the policing of Orgreave and the Miners' Strike had been destroyed last year. "We spoke frankly about the mistrust that this will have caused many in mining communities up and down the country, including those here in South East Northumberland and about the need for the investigation into the matter to be transparent. "The Police acknowledged this and expressed their professional embarrassment that these documents had been destroyed and assured me that an investigation had already begun to understand the decision making behind the actions. "I look forward to further correspondence from them and in the meantime will continue to press the government for the inquiry into the policing of the full dispute that has been needed for so long." A spokesperson for Northumbria Police said: "We can confirm there is an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the disposal of the material."
ITV News
26-06-2025
- Politics
- ITV News
Northumbria Police force destroys records relating to the Miners' Strike and 'Battle of Orgreave'
A police force has destroyed records relating to the Miners' Strike and the 'Battle of Orgreave' ahead of an inquiry into the violence. Northumbria Police has confirmed it disposed of two boxes containing data relating to the year-long strike, more than 40 years ago, in April last year. A Northumbria Police spokesperson said: 'We can confirm two boxes containing data in relation to the Miners' Strike were disposed of in April 2024 following a formal review, retain or disposal process in line with force policy and the Data Protection Act 2018." 'Absolutely alarming' Labour committed to hold an inquiry or investigation into Orgreave in their manifesto ahead of the 2024 election. And in the House of Commons on Thursday, Labour's Ian Lavery, MP for Blyth & Ashington, called for an urgent debate as he described the destruction as "absolutely alarming". "Is this the systematic attempt to obscure justice? I'm not sure if anyone is prepared to ask that question," he said, later adding: "Justice cannot be served if the evidence is systematically and deliberately destroyed." In response, Lucy Powell MP, Leader of the House of Commons, said she would continue to raise the issues with government ministers. She told MPs: "I would join him in saying to people anyone involved that they must retain the records and they must come forward, as they would be expected to do when those questions are asked, with every bit of information they have got on what happened." Meanwhile a group campaigning for an inquiry into the 'Battle of Orgreave' has labelled the force's move as "extremely disturbing". Kate Flannery, secretary of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, said: 'We are now understandably worried about how many other police forces may have recently destroyed or intend to destroy important information that would be very relevant in an Orgreave inquiry or investigation.' Yvette Cooper, who is now the Home Secretary, wrote to police forces involved in the policing at Orgreave in December 2016 in her role as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. She asked them to tell the committee what information they had on Orgreave that was not already in the public domain. The chief constable of Northumbria Police at the time, Steve Ashman, responded later in December 2016. He said they had found 15 documents relating to the clashes at Orgreave on 18 June 1984, detailed what two of the documents related to, and said they were available to the committee if requested. Kevin Horne, miner arrested at Orgreave on 18 June 1984, said: 'Any argument that documents and records were simply destroyed on the basis of time passed does not make sense given that Northumbria police and other police forces had by April 2024, already kept the documents for nearly 40 years.'
The Herald Scotland
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'This is a play that dazzles': Blinded by the Light, Traverse, 4 stars
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Neil Cooper Four stars In December 1982, twelve miners descended 2000 feet below the surface of Kinneil Colliery in Bo'ness. This was no ordinary working day, however, but a sit-in protest at the announcement by the National Coal Board of the pit's imminent closure. Two years before the Miners' Strike, and with no support from the unions, the protest's failure was the shape of things to come as British working class culture was transformed forever. Almost forty-three years after the Kinneil sit-in, Sylvia Dow's play excavates this piece of local history in a play that is both mournful and monumental. As it honours the recent past, it also looks to the future in a parallel plot in which a couple of centuries hence everyone is living underground, with the perils of outside an alluring totem of what went before. For those who occupy both time zones in Philip Howard's production for Dow's Sylvian company and the Bo'ness based Barony Theatre, the prospect of change for the better is something to aspire to. Read more This is the case both for Jerry - eighteen in 1982 - who becomes our narrator, and for seventeen-year-old Lily Seven, who has set her heart on going out into the upper world. Jerry, his old school socialist dad Matt and sceptical work mate Andy only want a living wage. Lily Seven and her friend Freddie Nine, meanwhile, read old books en route to a hand-me-down enlightenment that sees them look to an even bigger future than the one they occupy. Dow, Howard, and their cast of five fuse 1970s agit-prop with the sort of dystopian eco-fable that fuelled sci-fi films from the same era that in turn looked back to the brave new world of E.M. Forster's 1909 short story, The Machine Stops. The result in this piece, developed from a ten-minute short performed in 2014, is a lovingly realised tale of hope in a darkened world. Those living through each era criss-cross the centuries on Becky Minto's pitch black set, as Philip Pinsky's quietly seismic underscore pulses the play's light and shade. Andrew Rothney as Jerry, Barrie Hunter as Matt and Rhys Anderson as Andy leave their mark in a way that forms a legacy for Holly Howden Gilchrist's Lily Seven and Reece Montague's Freddie Nine to reclaim. As worlds change when history is made, this is a play that dazzles.
The Herald Scotland
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
KELI at The Royal Lyceum: a bittersweet mix of sadness and euphoria
When the massed ranks of Scottish brass champions the Whitburn Band join forces at the end of Lau accordionist and guitarist Martin Green's new play, alternating with the Fife based Kingdom Brass, the sound they make together is one of unity laced with a bittersweet mix of sadness and euphoria. As the culmination of a show about working class experience in a former mining town decimated by the 1984/85 Miners' Strike, it is a finale that speaks volumes about everything that went before. This is embodied by the seventeen-year-old firebrand who gives Green's play its title. Keli's everyday life may be in chaos as she tends to her mum inbetween shifts at the supermarket and a failing college course, but when she plays her tenor horn with the local brass band she comes alive. Keli's musical skills are recognised by bandleader Brian, who promotes her to soloist for a competition at the Royal Albert Hall. Read more reviews from Neil Cooper: While Keli makes it to London, trying to make the Megabus home takes her on a different path, and she ends up playing her horn at a techno fuelled fetish club. All this is framed by a back and forth between Keli and the ghost of miner and trade unionist Willie Knox after Keli ends up falling down an old pit. Willie's own tenure in the band is spoken of with awe, and his presence is a wake up call for Keli to channel her own talents. Developed from an audio drama and a one off live rendition at the Celtic Connections festival, Green's play taps into the power of music to reclaim and reinvigorate a local culture. Artist Jeremy Deller did something similar in the late 1990s with the soon to be revived Acid Brass, in which a brass band played arrangements of Acid House classics from the post-industrial north. Keli's own clubbing experience here confirms Deller's belief that both brass bands and techno are cross-generational forms of folk art rooted at the heart of specific communities. Forty year after the Miners' Strike, they remain vital forms of expression in a play where music becomes salvation and totem of hope. Green's brass-led underscore played live by a small ensemble led by tenor player Andrew McMillan runs throughout Bryony Shanahan's co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and Green's Lepus company. Liberty Black gives a mercurial performance as Keli, with Phil McKee making a touching Brian, who understands the need to believe in something in order to survive. Billy Mack as Willie Knox believes this too. It's only life that gets in the way, be it in the form of Keli's mum Jayne, played by Karen Fishwick, or Olivia Hemmati's Amy, who works with Keli. If the band steal the show as they preserve a sense of belonging rooted in the past, Keli's getting of wisdom points to a brave new world beyond.
