Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 2, 2025
One of the biggest joys of my relatively new Britbox subscription — aside from Ludwig — is the mystery series Karen Pirie. In its first season, it stars Lauren Lyle as DS Karen Pirie, a young Detective Sergeant tasked with reopening a 25-year-old cold case that has gained fresh attention thanks to a true-crime podcast.
Pirie is put in charge mostly because she’s aggressive and a little irritating, and her superiors don’t expect her to succeed. The case concerns the 1996 murder of Rosie Duff, a barmaid and young mother found stabbed after a night out in St. Andrews. At the time, suspicion fell on three drunk university students who discovered her body, but there was never enough evidence to charge them. Pirie relentlessly re-interviews the original witnesses and suspects until inconsistencies begin to surface. She also discovers that a female detective worked the original case, and notices how sexism and class influenced not only how Rosie’s murder was investigated in the ’90s but also how her own work is being dismissed (her colleagues basically call her a DEI hire).
I don’t want to spoil much, except to say that Pirie does solve the first season’s case. In season two, she’s promoted to Detective Inspector and handed another decades-old cold case — this one from 1984, involving the kidnapping of oil heiress Catriona Grant and her infant son, Adam. The case remained unresolved for decades, and as Pirie investigates, the series again weaves together the present-day investigation with flashbacks to the past.
The structure works well: each season tells one case across three feature-length episodes. In the second season, Pirie is more confident — sometimes too confident — and it backfires. She continues her romance with DS Phil Parhatka (Zach Wyatt), which faces its own hurdles, and brings in another assistant to work alongside Jason “Mint” Murray, the eager young constable who adds a dose of comic relief. As in the first season, the second digs into class, power, and corruption, this time focusing on how a wealthy family has managed to influence the investigation for over 40 years. The resolution to both seasons are not particularly surprising, but that’s only because of how meticulously Pirie investigates and pieces together clues until the murderer falls into place.
It’s good. The series is more intense than cozy, but never veers into gratuitous violence. It’s thoughtful in its exploration of themes, but the cases themselves are also genuinely gripping. By spending time with both past and present characters, the show makes you care about everyone caught up in the mystery. It’s a smart, character-driven detective series that balances emotional depth with satisfying, well-plotted investigations. It is very worthy of a Britbox subscription, not that there’s any shortage of worthy series on the service.
Season two of ‘Karen Pirie’ begins streaming on Britbox today.
