Column: There’s never been a TV detective quite like ‘Vera’
Of all the moody, broody British police dramas that ever forced a dogged detective to tramp through windswept moors, old-growth forests and muddy farmyards only to confront a desperate killer on the edge of a cliff (and there are loads of them), ITV’s “Vera,” available here on BritBox, is one of the best.
So let’s raise a glass, or a chip butty, in fond farewell. On Wednesday, American fans will be forced to say farewell to Vera Stanhope, Detective Chief Inspector of the Northumberland Police Department, a character who remains unique even amid the panoply of idiosyncratic police detectives that British television produces each and every year.
In part because there was never a sleuth so round and so fierce, but mostly because she is so deeply human.
For 14 seasons, Oscar-nominated Brenda Blethyn has donned Vera’s drab brown mac, crumpled wax bucket hat and inevitable scarf and bundled it all into a truly ancient Land Rover to stomp around some corpse or other, badgering the coroner about time and cause of death before snapping, “Well, quick as you can, pet.”
Vera appears to exist on chips, crisps, biscuits and the (more than) occasional slug of whiskey from a tea cup. She eats in her car and sleeps in her clothes (and often a chair). But she always raises her exceptionally dainty feet for her sergeant to slip on the paper booties at a crime scene — and never fails to check on the welfare of those left behind.
Indeed, after haranguing her team to do their jobs, she often skips the closed-case celebration to provide some tangible form of help to the grieving spouse or displaced mother, muttering, “You’ll be all right now, love” before driving off on her own.
”Pet” and “love” are her signature forms of address, whether calming a frightened witness, pushing back against an interfering attorney or grilling a belligerent suspect for information she usually already knows.
Not through any kind of intuition or deductive superpower, mind you. Vera is simply a very fine detective who perpetually pushes her often beleaguered team to leave no bank record unchecked, no statement unverified.
With a gimlet eye and a surprisingly girlish laugh, Vera is cantankerous, impatient, intensely private, unapologetically disheveled and utterly glorious.
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Based on the books of Ann Cleeves, whose work is also the basis for the even moodier, broodier series “Shetland,” “Vera” is a cerebral, as opposed to violent or troubling, crime drama. Murders are committed offscreen and plots twist and turn, often on the smallest detail — a type of flower, an old photograph, a historic miners strike.
Replete with bustling pubs, looming manors, isolated farm houses and an endless parade of colorful local characters (and their Geordie accents), “Vera,” the show, could easily be categorized as murder-mystery comfort food, like a savory dish of Shepherd’s Pie — full of surprising bits but still familiar.
But Vera, the character, is far more than that, and not just because Blethyn infuses her with such a captivating mix of slovenliness and precision, prickliness and empathy.
Hidden under that absurd hat and rumpled hair is the ultimate female police detective, the apex of the genre’s sexual revolution that began, on this side of the pond, with “Police Woman,” gained momentum with “Prime Suspect,” “Cagney and Lacey” and “Law and Order: SVU” (among others), and has given us, more recently, “Happy Valley” and “Mare of Easttown.”
A woman of a certain age when the show debuted in 2011 (Blethyn was 64 at the time), Vera has herself survived that revolution. As the show regularly notes, and the finale goes out of its way to underline, Vera joined the force when women were still a rarity. She experienced the doubt, derision and harassment that being among the first often entails, and she fought to stay the course.
All of which exists mostly in subtext and is more powerful for doing so. Vera is not bitter, but she’s too old and seasoned to suffer fools. Why should she? She’s got nothing to prove but who the murderer is.
Unmarried and childless, Vera does not grow wistful wondering what she might be missing, nor is she given to the existential angst that so often plagues older male detectives. She takes great satisfaction in policing her patch, giving aid to the victimized and bringing criminals to justice.
She has demons, of course, but they are personal, particular and far more interesting than the average haunted policeman. No aggrieved spouse or estranged child, no secret addiction or long-covered-up scandal. After losing her mother when she was still a child, Vera was raised in rural isolation by her father, Hector, an ornithologist and bird poacher who forced young Vera to aid him in his exploits.
If there has ever been a television character in legitimate turmoil over their parent’s bird-poaching, I have yet to see them.
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When we meet Vera in the first season, Hector has just died and she is forcing her sergeant, Joe Ashworth (David Leon), to dispose of his ashes. Much of her emotional journey involves coming to terms with her childhood memories and accepting that independence does not require keeping everyone, particularly her co-workers, at arm’s length.
She also teaches her team that soft words and compliments are not the only way a woman can show she cares.
Throughout the years, that team has changed. Coroners have come and gone (the latest is played by “We Are Lady Parts” frontwoman Sarah Kameela Impey), as have various detective constables (including, all too briefly, Bethany Whelan, played by Cush Jumbo). Ashworth was replaced in Season 5 with Det. Sgt. Aiden Healy (Kenny Doughty), only to return in Season 13. Only the endlessly good-natured Det. Constable Kenny Lockhart (Jon Morrison) has been by Vera’s side (and on the receiving end of her barbs) for the entirety of the show.
Well, Kenny and the hills, moors, forests, cliffs and beaches of Northumberland.
As the mac, hat and Land Rover would indicate, Vera is very much a creature of her environment, and that environment is just as varied and impressive as she is. There’s a reason “Downton Abbey,” the “Harry Potter” franchise and “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” all shot scenes in Northumberland, though none claimed it as thoroughly as “Vera.” Glowering skies notwithstanding, it’s impossible to watch even the most grisly case without longing to visit Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where the show is filmed, and take a tour of Lindisfarne Island, Alnmouth and Amble, Corbridge and Hadrian’s Wall.
Not surprisingly, location tours are available, though those hoping to catch a glimpse of the Dark Wives, the three standing stones featured in the series finale, will be disappointed — they were created by the production department.
As is fitting, the finale (no spoilers) leans into everything that made “Vera” one of ITV’s longest-running and most successful series: the magic of the landscape, the bonds of the team, the simple pleasures of figuring out who’s lying, who’s not and whodunit.
There are clashes and there is closure, but mostly there’s just Vera, bustling around in that ratty coat and beat-up car, to solve the case, save the day and aid the afflicted. For the final time.
You’ll be all right now, pet. Not sure about us.
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