Karen Pirie: How hit TV series changed Val McDermid's character after actor's 'personal recce' of Fife town
The second series of ITV detective series Karen Pirie will be broadcast from 20 July
The producers of a hit TV series based on a book by Val McDermid changed the occupation of a key character after being inspired by an actor’s “personal recce” to Fife.
Lauren Lyle, who plays detective Karen Pirie in the eponymous show, which is has just filmed its second series for ITV, said she had been inspired by a sea view from Methil, where the detective is from.
“It came from being in Fife and seeing the oil rigs on the horizon,” she said, adding that she had also witnessed the ongoing impact of the “abandoned pits” in the community.
“When I first got the job, I went up to Methil, which is where Karen's meant to be from, and did my own personal recce, wandering about listening to accents.
“Once you’re up at Methil, you can see the landscape and it’s just oil rig, oil rig, oil rig. It really is an industrial town. And it gave me such a clear sense of what Karen could be and where she came from.”
Ms Lyle, from Glasgow, spoke to writer Emer Kenny, who decided to change the occupation of character Sir Broderick Grant from property tycoon, as he was in McDermid’s Inspector Karen Pirie series of novels, to oil magnate.
The second series of the show focuses on the disappearance of oil heiress Catriona Grant and her son Adam, who were kidnapped at gunpoint in 1984. Pirie is tasked with re-opening the case.
The first series was also set in Fife, reopening an historic case in St Andrews.
Ms Kenny said changing Sir Broderick’s occupation added an extra element to the background of the story, juxtaposing the oil and the coal mining industry. The Scottish coal mining industry, which at its peak employed 150,000 men in 500 pits across the country, was decimated in the 1980s. The miners’ strikes, which began in 1984, lasted a year, plunging large swathes of the local community into poverty.
Ms Kenny said: “There wasn't that much about his [Sir Broderick’s] background in the book. The property tycoon element was just how he made his money, whereas we brought the oil industry into the story a little bit more, and it gave us more to work with.
“I thought it was very interesting because the miners’ strike is very present in the book and I thought it was very interesting that the North Sea oil boom was at a similar time in the 1980s.”
She added: “I just thought, thematically, to look at those two fossil fuel industries and the disparity between the wealth and then the poverty during the strike - that that could be an incredible thing to look into as a background for a story, and also the relevance of it to Fife.”
The second series of Karen Pirie will be broadcast on ITV from 20 July.
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