"[4] His three-part Never Come Back (BBC, 1990) – an adaptation of an obscure wartime thriller of the same name by author John Mair – has been described as "the film noir atmosphere of 1940s cinema brought across to remarkable effect.
[5] He courted controversy in 1995 with Black Easter,[6] a near-future thriller for BBC2 examining an increasingly dystopian European Union fighting waves of immigration from a war on its borders: despite its popularity, it has never been repeated.
Variety wrote, "Writer David Pirie has crafted a clever blend of historical evidence and fiction in the grand manner of a traditional Holmes mystery.
Pirie's two-part The Wyvern Mystery (BBC, 2000) – an adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's gothic horror-piece of the same name – has been described as "a splendid small-screen tribute to the moody-gloomy Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s.
"[1] In 2003, his screenplay adaptation of Agatha Christie's Sad Cypress, aired on ITV as an episode of the Poirot series, starring David Suchet.
As of 2014, Pirie was working on a modern remake of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, a feature version of his earliest TV production Rainy Day Women and a thriller set in the 60s Six Zero for Carnival Films the makers of Downton Abbey.