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We say goodbye to beloved Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope (Brenda Blethyn) with these two feature-length episodes that constitute a (very) short 14th series. What legacy will the character leave, and how much did she contribute to TV detective drama?
Vera has been with us for 14 years, so it’s a bit of jolt that the series has ended. And this even though the character has been described as ‘approaching retirement’ since the series started in 2011, and it would have been unreasonable to expect Blethyn, now aged 78, to go in the part much longer.
When Blethyn was tapped for the part, she was a multi-award-winning actress, and clearly a coup for the filmmakers, who were looking for someone to portray a strong female character of a certain age. They found the perfect vehicle in the Vera Stanhope novels, written by Ann Cleeves.
Vera is a DCI of the fictional Northumberland & City Police, obsessive about her work, living alone since the death of her father and not interested in any kind of romantic entanglement. She plods along in a generally dishevelled state, wearing a tatty Mac and a bucket hat, allegedly to protect her from sunlight which she is sensitive to. In fact, there’s not much sunlight to be had in Northumberland, the northernmost English county, which has to be described as the co-star of the series; its sweeping rain-driven landscapes and windswept coastline captured in spectacular drone shots, and clearly an influence on the generally dour aspect of its inhabitants. The series is filmed in Newcastle upon Tyne and throughout Northumberland, County Durham and North Yorkshire. Another star of the series is Vera’s Land Rover Defender, as battered but dependable as Vera is.
Of human co-stars, the most notable are David Leon as DS (later DI) Joe Ashworth (series 1–4, 13–14) and Kenny Doughty as DS Aiden Healy (series 5–12), with an otherwise variable cast, excluding Jon Morrison who plays DC Kenny Lockhart in all 14 series.
Of course, Vera’s dishevelled state hides a sharp, enquiring mind and an empathetic understanding of how people think; she often shows sympathy to the victims of crime, but also to offenders who have stumbled into crime. She forms very close working and personal relationships initially with Joe Ashworth, and (after a bumpy start) with Aiden Healy, and her great strength lies in getting the best out of her team – even Kenny, who as a PC for 14 years clearly doesn’t show much sign of initiative.
Plots in Vera – initially drawn from the Ann Cleeves novels – rarely involve what you would call high-profile cases. Missing teenagers, dead drug addicts, revenge killings, frauds, adultery, forbidden relationships, smuggling, drownings and robberies are all part of Vera’s everyday work, and there are usually tissues of lies, family secrets and plausible alibis to be sorted through before the truth is revealed. You’re often left with as much sympathy for the perpetrator as for the victim in some of the more depressing cases.
While Vera herself relies on psychological insight to seek out the truth, her team usually turn to plodding police work – it’s amazing the number of times a case is cracked by CCTV evidence, mobile phone records or ANPR, often brought up at the last minute just as the crime seemed impossible to solve. It has to be said that none of Vera’s cases are particularly memorable, and they certainly aren’t marked by car-chases, shoot-outs or dramatic standoffs.
For the final two feature-length stories, though, we are treated to two novelties: in Inside, Kevin Whately (Lewis) appears as a retired policeman whose slap-dash investigation of a murder leads to a deadly chain of events when the wrongly convicted man is released, and them finally, in The Dark Wives, we get what must be the biggest scene ever filmed for the series, a village ‘witch hunt’ taking place while a girl who witnessed a murder is hiding from the killer on the moors.
Besides solving these two cases, Vera has to resolve issues of her own – whether to accept a promotion, which would lead to spending all her time doing paperwork, and how to help troubled colleague Joe Ashworth, who has been struggling with his mental health since the death of his father. Typically, Vera resolves both issues without fuss, and in a way which is most considerate of all parties involved.
There’s a good deal of insight into the character of Vera and how the production was put together in ITV1’s follow-up tribute documentary Vera – Farewell, Pet, which is well worth viewing. Fun fact: Vera wears the same scarf in the last episode as she did in the first.
Though Brenda Blethyn apparently insisted that the character of Vera should not be killed off, as she will probably live on in more Ann Cleeves books, it looks like this is the last we will see of her on TV. (Ann Cleeves’ other series of novels have already been adapted for TV as Shetland and The Long Call). Vera might not have been the most brilliant or charismatic of detectives, and the series could, on occasion, be rather plodding and dour, but there’s clearly something there that appealed to viewers.
Given Vera’s high production values and consistent popularity, is there space for a Joe Ashworth spin-off or even an Endeavour-like original story series? So long as the rain continues to pour and the winds blow in the wilds of Northumberland, we will still have a place in our hearts for Vera’s style of detection, and dedication.
Chris Jenkins
Vera can be seen in the UK on ITVX
READ MORE: ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF VERA
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