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Well, people who know me, knows that I swear by Tartan Noirs. So when I first heard that Val Mcbride’s epynomus character Karen Pirie was coming to the TV in 2022, I was over the moon.

Shetland had been one of my favourite recommendations for people getting into the genre, but after Karen Pirie’s explosive first season, I can say that Shetland has a very good competition now.

Karen Pirie is one of the main female crime solving characters created by the Modern Queen of Crime Val McDermid. I really like her writing because she incorporates feminist and queer themes from her lived experiences of being a radical feminist and a lesbian. So more often than not, her characters operates under the extra pressure of optics and patriarchy.

Karen Pirie is no different, her office nickname is Box Ticker, because the boys club in the police station considers her a dei hire. To be honest, In the first season she gets the job because she is a woman, and she is picked because the actual murdered, who is in a higher position in the police force, never really thought she could be up to the job.

I think it is safe to say that the first season of Karen Pirie exceeded all expectations so much so that, other streaming services scrambled to make their own version of cold case procedurals as soon as possible. Netflix came out with Department Q with Matthew Goode, and Prime literally cancelled Bosch: Legacy to give more value to their similar show Ballard with Maggie Q.

I was kinda sceptical with the second season of Karen Pirie to be honest. But this month I had been a bit ill, so I found that a good excuse to binge the whole of Season 2 in one go. It is again a three episode season with one and half hour episodes. And it retains the same structure of going back and forth in the past to the present.

Unlike last season, the victim this time is not a working class woman. It is about an heiress of one of the biggest oil baron of Scotland. Catriona Grant. James Cosmo, who you might know as ser Joer Mormont from Game of Thrones or as Farder Coram from His Dark Materials plays the role of the Grant family Patriarch with utmost believability. He has been so good that our blunt to a fault detective couldnt figure out what he could have been hiding.

This season was a lot more predictable, as the series progresses you could spot some of the chinks in the armour, and guess which direction the story is going. Yet, the ending will still surprise you.

This case opens up after a surprisingly well preserved dead body is found in an abondoned quarry. That man was in possession of Catriona’s car keys, which he used to kidnap her. A kidnapping that happened 40 years ago, in 1984. Karen did find out eventually that Catriona was already in on it on the kidnapping and asking for the ransom, but eventually they also find the dead body of hers as well, throwing all speculations out of the window.

This season is more about class war than anything else. The Grant family has secrets, and they would go to any lengths to keep them from coming out. It doesn’t also hurt that they have all the resources and the money to undercut the detectives and sabotage the investigations. They did it last time, and tried really hard this time as well. However, they did love their daughter and grandson, and would not have harmed them either. Grant’s businesses put multiple miners out of work, so it could have been about a revenge from the unionising miners as well, or could be the crime family that is known for their ruthlessness in Scotland.

I really like scottish productions. their cinematography is very beautiful and having picturesque small towns seem like an added bonus. There are a lot of new actors who I do not know, and that is honestly refreshing. Chris Jenks as Mint, or Karen’s new puppy is actually a very lovable himbo.

I also need to point out that when most american procedurals are basically copaganda, british shows often take the route to show how much corruption there is in the police force. Sure, Karen Pirie is not as dark and heartbreaking like Red Riding, or as hellbent against corruption as Line of Duty (fuck the last season), but it still shows the cracks quite clearly. However I do not like the fact that the show pushes one bad apple rhetoric. However, I guess I can look the other way since their portrayal of systemic racism in scotland is quite realistic.

Val wrote 8 novels about Karen, so I guess we can expect six more seasons to come. I do not mind waiting for couple years for new seasons, and I do think the breaks help a lot. I hope the show is renewed again.

I also like the politics of Val. Queerness in her writings exist as a matter of fact, and generally has no bearing on the story. Which is extremely refreshing in the claustrophobic queer tv show genre where everything rotates around it. Queer people are more than their sexuality, and I’m really glad the show stays true to the source material.

I do recommend you watch Karen Pirie. It doesn’t treat the audience as stupid, and often it shows the audience a lot more context about the characters than the detective without divulging any extra details. That is extremely hard to do and the show-runners deserve praise for executing that flawlessly. If you have liked procedurals like Shetland or Broadchurch, you’ll feel at home with Karen Pirie.