Is ITV drama Karen Pirie season two based on a true story?
Karen Pirie has made her comeback for an electrifying second series, with Outlander star Lauren Lyle tackling a fresh cold case mystery as the fearless Scottish detective. The much-loved ITV detective programme initially premiered in 2022, adapting Val McDermid's Inspector Karen Pirie book series for television.
The debut series followed the intrepid young Scottish detective as she delved into a quarter-century-old case, exposing the killing of a barmaid amongst a tangled web of sinister secrets, deception, and potential suspects.
This second series, drawing from McDermid's novel A Darker Domain, explores the 1984 abduction of an enchanting oil fortune heiress, Catriona Grant, alongside her two-year-old son Adam.
The pair were snatched at gunpoint outside a chip shop in Fife, vanishing without trace despite a frenzied media frenzy.
The investigation resurfaces when a man's corpse is discovered, bearing connections to the original abduction, reports the Mirror.
The official description hints: "After her bittersweet success in series one, Karen has been promoted to Detective Inspector and seemingly given the authority she has long been fighting for.
"Just as she's getting into the swing of her powerful new role, she is assigned an infamous unsolved case that will put her under intense scrutiny; from her boss, from the media, and ultimately, from sinister forces that would rather the past stayed in the past."
Is Karen Pirie series two inspired by real events?
Whilst the investigation does appear plausible enough to have actually occurred, A Darker Domain remains entirely fictitious. The novel draws its inspiration from the UK Miners' Strike of 1984-1985 in Fife, when with the fictional crime of Catriona's kidnap and the setting where McDermid grew up.
However, despite the central case of the series being a work of fiction, actress Lauren discovered some elements of truth in her character.
She shared her intriguing experience during filming: "It was really interesting when we were filming, we started at St Andrews Cathedral and one night we had police escorts with us," she said prior to the first series broadcast.
"One of them was a 20-something blonde woman, and it turns out she was a detective from Methil, the same tiny town Karen is from! To me, she was the real Karen Pirie.
"So we exchanged numbers and we stayed in touch, it was like looking into a mirror for Karen."
Emer Kenny, the writer, also recently emphasised the significance of maintaining the original timeline of the book, even though the first season is set in the 1990s while the initial book, The Distant Echo, takes place in the 1970s.
Speaking to Radio Times, she explained: "This time it felt really important for it to be 1984, which is what it is in the book, because the background is the miners' strike, which, in the east of Scotland, was a massive thing in that area.
"And quite a few of our characters are living in those areas, and some of the miners, so it felt really important that we keep it there. Also, I really love that era. I think it's interesting politically, and I like the music and the style."
She added: "Also, it's quite important to Val because she's from that area, she lived through that."
Lauren, reflecting on the filming process, shared with the publication that they frequently visited Val's hometown.
She explained: "We'd put up some of our sets, you would see the old mounts, the pit heads, and we would use all that. And they've never been taken away, because they can't, they were just sort of abandoned. It's quite haunting and intense to be around that. It really puts into perspective how real some of that was."
Karen Pirie is available to watch on ITVX.
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