‘Karen Pirie’ Season 3 Will Take ‘The Skeleton Road’
'Karen Pirie' undergoes a format shift for Season 3 as Lauren Lyle returns to the series.
It’s been just over a year since Karen Pirie Season 2 premiered simultaneously on ITV and BritBox in October 2025. While the long silence on a renewal had us worried, it turns out we needn’t have been, as production studio World Productions and ITV have officially confirmed the series will return for a third season.
However, the series will undergo a major format shift. After two seasons of three feature-length episodes, Season 3 will shift Karen Pirie to a more American-TV-friendly six-episode format, all one-hour installments. Despite the change in how the series is cut (three feature-length episodes and six one-hour episodes work out to the same length, just paced differently), the production will not succumb to the newest fad of doing three two-part mysteries over six installments. The series will continue the one book = one season adaptation method that’s worked well for it so far.
Season 1 was based on Scottish author Val McDermid’s first Karen Pirie novel, The Distant Echo; Season 2 continued the novel-order adaptation, following the second Pirie book, A Darker Domain. It’s no surprise, then, that Season 3 is based on Val McDermid’s third novel in the series, The Skeleton Road.
(Seven Karen Pirie novels are currently published; the eighth, Silent Bones, arrived in December 2025, so there’s plenty more to go as long as the cast is game.)
Here’s the synopsis for Season 3:
The story begins with the discovery of a man’s remains hidden in the roof of a derelict building in Edinburgh. DI Karen Pirie learns that the victim fled the Balkans conflict of the 1990s for the safety of Scotland to marry a now-famous author, whose identity stirs up a hornet’s nest of publicity. As the investigation develops, Karen unearths dangerous secrets and a vicious cycle of revenge as someone takes justice into their own hands. Can Karen stop the killer before they kill again? When present resentment collides with secrets of the past, the truth is more shocking than anyone could have imagined.
Thus far, only Lauren Lyle, who stars as the titular Pirie, has been confirmed to return for the new season. However, the novel brings back the central ensemble, so we expect the show to bring back Emer Kenny (Father Brown) as Dr. River Wilde, Chris Jenks (Vigil) as DC Jason ‘Mint’ Murray, and Zach Wyatt (Timestalker) as DS Phil Parhatka. Other potential returnees include Steve John Shepherd (Harry Potter) as DCS Lees, and Rakhee Thakrar (Sex Education) as Bel Richmond. The ensemble will also add Saskia Ashdown (Annika) as DC Isla Stark. The guest cast is expected to be revealed closer to filming.
Kenny passes lead writing duties to Gillian Roger Park for the show’s third season, with Deli Segal also writing. No directors have been set as yet, but Marcus Wilson (Luther) returns to produce. McDermid, Lyle, and Park executive produce alongside Simon Heath and Emma Luffingham for World Productions and Huw Kennair for the BBC.
Karen Pirie Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on BritBox. Filming for Season 3 will begin in early 2027, with an expected premiere in 2028.
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