I finally watched Karen Pirie and it's one of the best crime dramas I've ever seen — bring on season 2

I'd always meant to watch Karen Pirie when it originally aired on ITV1 back in 2022, but never got around to it.

With Karen Pirie season 2 arriving on ITV1 this Sunday, I thought I'd catch up with the first series, and boy, I'm glad I did.

The three-part first series, available now to stream for free on ITVX, is based on "The Distant Echo", the first story in Val McDermid's best-selling series of novels.

It's from the makers of Line of Duty and Bodyguard, which is a recommendation in itself if you love exciting, fast-paced dramas. But Karen Pirie is even better than those two big-name monster hits.

Outlander's Lauren Lyle gives one of TV's great performances as the titular character, a fearless Scottish detective sergeant, who is tasked with reopening the unsolved 1990s murder of a young barmaid, Rosie Duff (Anna Russell-Martin), in the university town of St Andrews.

With Rosie's death now the subject of a true-crime podcast, Karen vows to crack the case and quickly focuses on the three university friends who claimed to have found Rosie dead in a graveyard. So many cops are two-dimensional on screen, but not Karen. You feel her highs and lows as she makes what seem like key breakthroughs before being thwarted time and time again as she remorsefully searches for the truth. Karen also has to deal with sexist colleagues, who think her appointment on such a big case is just a box-ticking exercise.

She's wonderfully supported by her enthusiastic if rather dopey junior partner Jason "Mint" Murray (Chris Jenks), who provides much-needed moments of comedy. But this is very much Karen's show, and you just can't bear the idea that she won't find Rosie's killer.

The plot is packed with superb twists, building to one of the most satisfying and dramatic TV endings for a crime series I can remember. Amazingly, Karen Pirie was largely overlooked by the TV awards running that year and doesn't seem to have achieved the acclaim it clearly deserves.

Now, at last, we're about to have the second season to enjoy. Based on Val McDermid’s 2008 novel "A Darker Domain", the second story in the author’s Karen Pirie franchise, and again adapted for the small screen by Father Brown star Emer Kenny, the three-parter revolves around the 1984 disappearance of an oil heiress, Catriona Grant (World on Fire’s Julia Brown), and her two-year-old son, Adam, who were kidnapped at gunpoint outside a fish-and-chip shop in Fife.

Setting up the series, Lauren tells us: "It's the biggest missing-persons case in Scottish history. Catriona Grant is the daughter of oil tycoon Sir Broderick Grant — played by the wonderful James Cosmo [Nightsleeper] — and Karen doesn't love the idea of having to rehash a case that has already had loads of money and time put into it.

"But when a body is found in connection with this historic kidnap, it all kicks off again."

It promises to be just as great as the first series.

Karen Pirie season 2 begins on Sunday, 20 July, at 8 pm on ITV1. It will be available as a box set on ITV1 from that date. The first series is available to watch on ITVX in the UK and BritBox in the US.