BritBox’s ‘Karen Pirie’ is the Sort of Police Procedural We Need

Karen Pirie is a new breed of police procedural, and it’s about time. The team responsible for Line of Duty and Bodyguard, joined by writer/actor Emer Kenny (who also takes the role of Karen’s best friend River) and director Gareth Bryn, have created a thoughtful, entertaining, and, yes, feminist series. Lauren Lyle (Marsali in Outlander) is stunningly good in the title role playing a young, ambitious, and dedicated Scottish police officer.

Karen has no dark secrets or past trauma, which is so refreshing in a mystery series. She is steely, witty, and articulate, and her exchanges with friends and colleagues are often surprisingly funny. She doesn’t look like a cop –– she’s small, wears no make-up, sports casual clothes, Doc Martens, and a fanny pack. But she can negotiate the labyrinth of white, male privilege that is the Scottish police with cool competence and good sense. When offered a promotion to investigate a cold case, she’s pleasantly surprised but realizes she is being used to demonstrate how progressive and feminist the modern police is.

Her on-again-off-again boyfriend and colleague Phil Parhatka (Zach Wyatt) expected to receive the promotion and voices his suspicions of their superiors’ motives. Their colleagues will claim that Karen was promoted because of her gender, just as they would argue if Phil had been promoted, that race was a factor. However, (unlike Karen’s boss Chief Superintendent Jimmy Lawson (Stuart Bowman), who served on the original cold case Karen is to investigate), Phil does not underestimate Karen’s skills.