With a big promotion, a headline-grabbing case and an office romance, the titular Scottish copper is in the thick of it this season, personally and professionally. Star Lauren Lyle and creator Emer Kenny break down the drama
When the first season of Scottish crime series Karen Pirie was met with rave reviews, creator Emer Kenny and her lead actress Lauren Lyle experienced the full gamut of emotions. “There was relief, because we put so much of ourselves into it,” says Kenny. “Lauren and I, we absolutely love this show, and we really work ourselves to the bone trying to make it excellent, so you are just hoping that it’s going to have a positive response.” For Lyle, up till then best known for her supporting role on Outlander, it was confirmation of a vibe she already felt on set. “This was both of our first time leading something as actor and writer, and we had this strange feeling where I was like, ‘I think this is going to be really good,’” she says. “For it to pay off was quite magical.”
Yet, ironically, that made returning to work all the harder. “It was daunting,” says Kenny. “As Lauren said, we had a sense of magic from the first one and I was nervous — could I capture that again? I also put a lot of how I felt about the world into the first series, about being a young woman, about what it’s like to be in a male-dominated environment, what I was struggling with in myself, in terms of confidence and speaking up, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve said all that, so what do I have left to say?’ It ended up being about [Karen’s] move up to being a boss and having more power and authority, which is also what I was feeling going into the second season.”
After winning the BAFTA Scotland award for Best Actress in Television, Lyle was also feeling the pinch. “You kind of go, ‘Oh my God, I now have to live up to being what everyone is telling me that I am or is expecting me to be.’ That is definitely nerve-racking,” she says. That stress was something Kenny channelled into our protagonist, who gets promoted to Detective Inspector and is tasked with solving one of the biggest missing person cases in U.K. history, a kidnapped oil heiress referred to as the John Paul Getty III of Scotland, and her infant son. “The stakes really go up for Karen,” says Kenny. “She has a lot more power and authority, but then she’s given this big case as well, so expectations have also risen. She gets the big office, loads of personnel to boss around, and she’s just thinking, ‘Gulp, can I do this again?’”
We also find Karen fumbling to navigate a secret relationship with her colleague, DS Phil Parhatka, played by Zach Wyatt. “It’s not just a fun thing anymore, they want to be together, and they could be together, but they’re going to have to navigate not being allowed to talk about it. How do we do that in this stage of life?” Lyle muses. “I often feel like your late 20s, early 30s, is such a pivotal time in life to start making big decisions.” Indeed, these are the conundrums Kenny enjoys exploring the most in her writing. “If it was up to me, I would just write endless scenes about their relationship, but unfortunately I’m writing a crime show,” she quips. “I get notes that she needs to solve some crime now!”
The show is based on the works of Scottish author Val McDermid, and season two hews to the order of the novels. Yet even if that weren’t the case, Kenny would have picked A Dark Domain as her follow-up to the first season. “Probably not by coincidence — I just had a baby when I started writing it — I just found the kidnapping with a young child really, really terrifying and interesting, in terms of how that would feel,” says Kenny. “I think wherever you can feel that emotion, it’s going to make a great scene and it’s going to make a great show. But this book also has some huge twists, so whoever you think is the villain, it flips and then it flips again, and whoever you think is alive is dead and whoever you think is dead is alive. Even though I probably could have moved to a different book, this one really sang as something that would be a step up from season one and take Karen to the next level.”
Between Outlander and Karen Pirie, Lyle has now starred in two series that put Scotland on the map for its outstanding TV and film production. Still, the actress doesn’t want to lean too hard into the regional specificity. “Something with Karen that I’ve always loved is that it is set in Scotland and it’s about a Scottish girl, but it doesn’t feel like a Scottish story,” she says. “It feels quite universal in its themes and just happens to be set in Scotland. I have a bit of an aversion to the ‘tartan noir’ thing . . . like, ‘Little Scotland.’ I think it really shows Scotland in quite a sexy way. We’re making something that is Scottish and cool, and the rest of the world have completely jumped onboard with that.”
Karen Pirie, streaming on BritBox