On June 26, 1996, Tom ‘Weird’ Mackie (Jack Hesketh) hangs out with his friends at the pub watching the game. A patron tells Rosie Duff (Anna Russell-Martin) to bring out the Jager because the Germans are going to do it. She believes it is going to be mayhem tonight. Tom, Alex (Buom Tihngang), and another friend talk about Rosie while drinking together. Rosie complains about hearing the same song again before she is asking if her man is in the bar. She insists she doesn’t have a man. When Tom approaches the bar and calls Rosie beautiful, she tells him that Iona will help him. Tom’s friends worry that her brothers will crush him. Once his friends leave, Ziggy (Jhon Lumsden) goes back inside to tell Rosie where they’ll be. Rosie tells Ioan that she is going to pop out. She asks her to tell Colin and Bri that she is just changing the line.

As Rosie leaves, she ducks under the window to make sure nobody will see her. PC Janice Hogg notices Colin (Daniel Portman) kicking something behind her around 3:59 AM. She drives over to him to say she is going to need a statement from him. He tells her not to start. She doesn’t want to give him a lift so he asks to come home with her instead. He tells him to have a nice walk before driving away. She continues until a boy jumps in front of her car and calls for the police. He claims they just found her and didn’t do it. As Ziggy begins running from her, he asks her to call an ambulance because she is dying. They catch up with Alex before finding Rosie’s body on the cathedral grounds. After the intro, Bel Richmond (Rakhee Thakrar) records a podcast about the incident. An adult Tom listens to the podcast while Ziggy (Alec Newman) goes for a run. It is now 25 years later and the murder remains unsolved.

DCS James Lawson (Stuart Bowman) talks to another officer about the podcast. James admits it looks bad that they didn’t open a review. He doesn’t think they should underestimate Bel since she gave the Met hell over a missing person’s case. The boss says he’ll put some poor sod on it without any hope of solving it for damage control. James recommends a female detective if he has one of those. DS Karen Pirie (Lauren Lyle) works with her partner who says the flats are tiny so there is no way he hid 50k worth of stuff in there without her knowing. They knock on the door so they can get Tracey’s witness statement, but she says it isn’t a good time. They learn that they’re back together, but he came home drunk. Tracey doesn’t want to cooperate and help put him away. DS Phil Parhatka (Zach Wyatt) wrestles with the boyfriend while Karen struggles to deal with Tracey. After the boyfriend throws up, he is taken away by police.

They agree to go back to Karen’s place. She asks Phil to approach the shower slowly because she hasn’t seen a naked man in a long time. They hang out and get drunk. Phil tells her that Serious Crime is putting together a team for a case review for an unsolved murder from 1996. He believes he could be picked. She wonders if he is trying to get away from her. Phil knows he is an a-hole, but he thinks she likes it. They begin kissing before waking up in bed together. When she gets off the phone, Phil asks if it was Robertson. She says it was DI Lees. Phil is surprised to learn that she is going to be running the review. She tries to smooth things over with Phil by saying she is sorry and doesn’t understand it. Although he insists it is fine, Karen doesn’t believe that. Once he leaves, she listens to the podcast about Rosie’s case.

She goes to the scene where Rosie’s body was discovered while Bel talks about the things women have to do to protect themselves now. She believes police gave up on Rosie’s case so quickly because she had a sex life and went out to meet someone that night. At home, Karen complains to River Wilde (Emer Kenny) about Phil and how he just left. Karen doesn’t understand why she got the position because she doesn’t know what she is doing. River urges her to just pretends like she does. Once she reaches the police station, Simon Lees (Steve John Shepherd) wants to get her briefed before introducing her to the team. Although she is from Methil, she doesn’t remember Rosie’s case since she was only three at the time. She is asked to keep an eye on Bel because they can slap her with an injunction if she oversteps the mark.

Lees introduces her to Jason Murray (Chris Jenks) who is called Mints. He is the only person on her team. She learns that she already has a nickname, but Jason doesn’t think it is wise to tell her what it is. As they prepare to get to work, Jason confirms he listens to the podcast that he describes as feminist. Once Karen says she wants to go back to the beginning, we return to the crime scene through a flashback. Janice begins working to save Rosie since she is still warm. Ziggy is a medical student so he offers to help. He tells Janice that he left to find a phone, but she thinks he should’ve stayed since he is a medic. As help arrives, Janice admits she thinks Rosie is gone. She tells the boss about the two boys and how one of them ran out in front of her car. DS Jimmy Lawson (Kevin Mains) is told to detain the boys. Karen tells Jason that the victim was strangled by hand, but the stomach wound killed her.

They don’t understand why they’d cut her across the stomach or leave her in a graveyard. Karen doesn’t think they were trying to hide the body since it was left in a tourist attraction. Although they think she was killed with a kitchen knife, they never found it. They found fibers from the interior carpet of a car on Rosie so they likely moved the body. In the past, Jimmy is introduced to Tom, Alex, and Sigmund or Ziggy. Janice notices that Ziggy drops something. The couples get rough with them when detaining them. Janice retrieves whatever Ziggy dropped. In the van, Ziggy tells his friends to say that they didn’t see her tonight and don’t know her. Bel decides to give the three suspects aliases since they weren’t charged. Tom is the Historian because he was a history student. Even though he was suspended several times, he became a university lecturer himself.

Alex is the Artist who is the hardest of the three to research. Finally, Ziggy is being called the Medic because he is now a celebrated surgeon. He has been described as an incessant perfectionist and a workaholic. Although he is doing a lot of good in the world, she wonders if he is being driven by guilt. Ziggy runs to the cemetery and stops in front of Rosemary’s grave. He tells her he is sorry. Karen says the boys were interviewed immediately since they could only be held for six hours. Detective MacLennan questions Ziggy who claims they found her while walking home from a party. Alex tells the detective that they watched the match at The Lammas Pub first. Since Rosie worked there, Alex has to say he only saw her from afar. Although he ordered drinks from her, he insists he didn’t know her. Alex believes they left the pub around 10:30 or 11. Tom says they went to a party until they walked home, but he can’t seem to remember much.

Ziggy is asked if the party was at Scooniehill Lane. Detective MacLennan shows him a bloody card with an address on it. Karen says it is an abandoned manor that is old and dilapidated. There would be plenty of places to kill someone without being noticed. MacLennan suggests Ziggy invited Rosie to the party, she turned up, and something went very wrong. Ziggy says he did although he claims that she didn’t come. He wasn’t trying to hide the paper. Instead, it fell out of her pocket when he was trying to help her. The detective doesn’t believe they stumbled across her on her way home since the cathedral isn’t on their way home. Even though the detective keeps pushing, Ziggy denies everything and says he didn’t kill her. Karen says nobody saw Rosie at the party. The building used for the party has been demolished since Rosie’s murder.

They watch CCTV footage of the moment Rosie left the pub since that is the last time she was seen alive. Iona said she left the pub to meet someone, but she isn’t sure who that person could’ve been. Rosie’s brothers Colin and Brian Duff were extremely protective with criminal records. There were signs that Rosie might’ve had sex that night although there was no semen. Karen finds it strange that she had a cesarean scar across her lower stomach. It seems a possible baby was barely investigated. Karen suggests the brothers will be able to shed light on that. She asks Jason to get across the forensics tonight so they can speak to the brothers tomorrow. He says he has a HIIT class, but ends up staying to work on it anyway. Karen runs into Phil outside and asks if he just isn’t going to text her back. He claims he has been trying to find the right words.

Phil spoke to Lees and learned why they wanted her on the job. She asks if they put her on this because she is a woman, but Phil claims that isn’t the only reason. Phil says it isn’t a bad thing. There are many mediocre white men in the building who get promoted all the time so he doesn’t think they should care why they are moving up. She doesn’t want people to think she is a fraud because she is a PR win for the service. Although he says he isn’t the enemy, Karen says he still agrees with them. When Karen joins Jason, she reveals Janice married Colin in 2001. They moved into the old Duff family home after Rosie’s father died. As they visit Janice, a flashback shows the moment Janice visited Rosie’s parents. When Archie asks what his boys have done now, he is told it isn’t the boys this time. Colin Duff (Gerry Lynch) wonders if they’re taking it seriously by giving it to some kids.

When Archie learns, he claims he let down Eileen and let this happen to their poor baby. The detective won’t tell them much about the people they’re questioning in relation to the murder. Colin is told to let Barney do his job. In the present, the detectives learn how everyone was in the bar until Rosie left without the brothers noticing. In the past, Colin tells them that Brian went after some girl and said he’d come back for them when he was done. He only noticed that Rosie was gone when the pub was emptied. Iona gave them the keys so they could wait for Brian or Rosie to arrive, but they never did. In the present, Brian admits to falling asleep in a girl’s bed. He was there until eight in the morning and his dad was crying when he returned home. They think Rosie went to meet Ziggy Malkiewicz.

When Jason tries to ask about the cesarean scar, Colin says it is time for them to go. He screams until they leave. In the past, Janice is told to call the pathologist to tell them to expedite the post-mortem because they’ve got to let the boys go in a few hours. Janice follows Karen out to tell her that the baby didn’t survive for more than a day or two. As for the father, he was a local boy named John Stobie who went to her school. They looked into him and he was at a university somewhere. Janice insists he had nothing to do with it. Once Karen gets into the vehicle with Jason, she asks him to get a birth certificate for Rosie’s baby and a death certificate. Next, Karen meets with Ziggy at his workplace. They agree to go get a drink. She mentions that he hasn’t returned any of her calls, but Ziggy knows he doesn’t have to talk to her and he is just doing it out of courtesy.

She offers him a courtesy back by allowing him to add anything he might’ve missed during his 1996 interview. Ziggy stands by his original statement that he left Rosie in the pub before finding her at the cathedral. Karen says the Duff brothers seem sure that he was involved with their sister, but Ziggy thinks she should discard anything they say. He claims they were vicious thugs and Rosie was terrified of them. When she asks if he was seeing Rosie, Ziggy says he is gay and married now. There was a time when he was working out his sexuality, but he insists Rosie was never involved in that. He refuses to talk to her anymore without a lawyer. In a flashback, DS Jimmy searches the students’ house. They find nothing incriminating in the party house or the students’ house. Detective MacLennan wants the boys released although he is going to keep eyes on them. They return home a short time later. Jason gets the birth certificate that shows Orla Rose Duff was born on August 21, 1993.

A father is not mentioned, but adopted is written at the top of the paper. That makes them question whether the baby actually died and if Rosie might’ve lied to everyone. Karen meets with John Stobie who quickly denies having a romantic relationship with Rosie. John tells her about the time Rosie’s brothers followed him and jumped him when no one was around. They accused him of sleeping with Rosie and getting her pregnant. They broke his nose, collarbone, and a couple of ribs so he stayed away from Rosie after that. Although he can’t understand why Rosie said it was him, Karen suggests she was protecting someone else. Ziggy has a nightmare in the middle of the night so his husband believes he dreamed he cheated on him with Dua Lipa again. Karen meets with James and Simon to talk about Rosie’s baby. When she asks why there wasn’t much about it in the files, James says DI MacLennan was very good friends with Rosie’s father Archie.

Archie wanted to keep it out of the report as much as possible because she was 15 when she got pregnant. They took the family’s word that the baby was John Stobie. DS Pirie tells them about the baby being adopted and how John isn’t the father. He also couldn’t be the killer since he was away at Leeds at the time. She wants to go to Child Services to see if she can find out who the father is, but Simon doesn’t think they should. He argues that tracing adopted children should always be the last resort. They have to carefully consider these things because it could create chaos for these people. James agrees although he says it is good to have that options if all other routes are exhausted. He suggests considering that one of the students could’ve been the father since two lived only half an hour away. In the past, Detective MacLennan learns about the fibers found on Rosie’s clothes. They speculate that it was picked up when she was in the boot of a car.

Jimmy will try to find out if the students had access to a vehicle. The students talk about moving the car. Ziggy worries it’ll be bad if they find it, but the others are concerned that they’re being watched. Since Tom is off his face, he can’t be sure where he left the vehicle. Tom left the keys in the car after driving a girl home. He admits he just wants to go home. Ziggy tells them they can go back while he stays and tries to find the car so he can move it. Late one night, Karen tells River about a case of someone throwing a brick into a car and DNA being found on the brick. They traced them using some ancestry website. She wants to use “whatsmyheritage.com” to find out more about Rosie’s baby. The only problem is that she’ll need River’s help. To do that, River would have to get in touch with Rob who sexted her all the time. River tells her that the podcast lady is always riling people up.

She shows her a video of the detectives she has posted on social media. Detective MacLennan is belittled by a reporter for asking the women of St. Andrews to be vigilant to keep themselves safe. Ziggy is followed when he leaves. Karen and Jason meet with Bel. They quickly get into an argument about the original investigation and whether it was well run. Bel takes credit for getting the police to review the case. When she talks about all the work she has done, Karen makes sure she doesn’t want to withhold evidence. They go to Bel’s room so they can look at everything. Karen quickly says Jason will stay, but he isn’t eager to do that. Jason worries that she has boxes full of nothing. Karen won’t stay because she’ll kill Bel so Jason has no choice but to stay. As Karen leaves, she tries to get in touch with Mr. Mackie. Tom listens to the message and doesn’t respond.

Alex is with his girlfriend or wife when she gets an ultrasound. He ignores a call from an unknown number which is probably Karen. Ziggy looks through text messages talking about the case and asking to defund the police. In a flashback, Tom and Alex leave Ziggy. He panics when he sees a news report about Rosie on the television and quickly turns it off. In the present, Bel tells Jason how she went to St. Andrews and heard people talking about the murder. He eventually admits to asking her questions so she can’t ask him any. She likes podcasting because it is a really direct way of telling a story and people who might not read would tune in. Jason admits to listening to the podcast in the gym. Bel wants to know about physical evidence, but Jason says she is going to have to try harder than that. DS Pirie tries to call Mr. Gilbey and leaves a message before Phil interrupts.

He is ready to celebrate now that Lawson is moving him up to the murder squad. Phil apologizes for being an a-hole. He asks if she has time for a drink, but Karen says she does not. Ziggy meets with Tom and Alex. He thinks they should do things differently this time by telling the truth. They don’t want to do that because they’ve all got things to lose now. Ziggy isn’t sure he can stick to the story this time. Tom tells him that he better. Bel brings wine and says it is time to start drinking although Jason admits he is still on the clock. Jason eventually takes a glass before noticing something in one of the pictures she has. He rushes out after thanking her for the wine. In the past, the students go to the abandoned manor so they can party with the others. When Rosie arrives outside, Ziggy tells her that she needs to stop messing around because she is either in or out. He tells her to go and do one if she is not.

Jason manages to find Karen so he can tell her that Rosie was at the party with Ziggy. When Ziggy returns home, his husband tries to get him to sit down and talk to him. Ziggy wants to go for a run since it is the only thing keeping him sane. His husband says okay but they have to have dinner without phones. In the past, Ziggy tries to find out where Tom left the car. He says he’ll go out the back so they won’t see him. Donnie tells Colin that he hasn’t said anything for about twenty minutes. Colin doesn’t think there is much to say because he just wants to hurt something. Donnie reveals he knows where they live. Colin wants to go there immediately. They spot Ziggy walking so Colin gets out and forces him into the car. Karen and Jason discuss the fact that they’ve finally caught Ziggy in a lie. In the past, Colin tries to force Ziggy to tell him the truth about what happened to Rosie.

He holds him over the well. Ziggy swears that he didn’t kill her before he is dropped. In the present, he gets hit by a car while running. Karen and Jason arrive at the scene and learn about Ziggy being hit. They’re told he is dead. The police go to his house to tell his husband about it.

 

Karen Pirie Review

Although it is still early in the season, the opening episode of Karen Pirie doesn’t instill much confidence that this is going to be a breakout hit. While it isn’t terrible by any means, it is tilted more in that direction than in the direction of being great. Without subtitles, it would be difficult to understand half of what the characters are saying. Some do a better job of speaking up and not mumbling, but some characters are almost unintelligible.

There isn’t much out of the ordinary in Karen Pirie because we’ve seen the same storyline countless times with Unforgotten coming to mind. The performances leave a lot to be desired with an abundance of over-the-top acting throughout the first episode. The shaky camera technique can work great during intense scenes, but it is used far too much here and doesn’t work when overused to the point that the viewer loses focus.

A bigger issue could very well be the likeability of the main characters. Not only are Karen Pirie and Bel Richmond unlikeable, but they’re downright irritating at times especially when they’re together. The series had plenty to preach about though since pretty much every mainstream social point was touched on in the first episode when it wasn’t necessary.

The only shining lights in an otherwise dark, dreary first episode were Chris Jenks and Stuart Bowman, the latter who is always excellent. Too bad he was underutilized. Unfortunately, the story is painfully dull at this point making it difficult to care about the outcome of the investigation or whether Karen can prove she deserves her spot among the mediocre officers in the department.

The opening episode scores a 4.5 out of 10. Recaps of Karen Pirie can be found on Reel Mockery here. We understand the annoyance of ads and the benefits of using ad blockers. If you do and would like to support our work, learn how to do so by following this link.