So, farewell then, DCI Vera Stanhope? There seems to have been a growing consensus that the latest episode of Vera was also going to be its last. With only three episodes in this, the 13th series, Brenda Blethyn’s comment that there were “no plans” for any more has been seized upon as evidence that the much-loved Sunday-night procedural is destined for the mortuary slab.
Blethyn’s DCI Stanhope would probably have dismissed such “evidence” as flimsy, but there have been other signs that show might be coming to an end. Kenny Doughty’s departure as long-standing sidekick Aiden Healy at the end of the last series suggested that the actor might have read the writing on the wall. And David Leon’s return as DI Joe Ashworth after a decade away (presumably a sop to long-term fans) made it feel like a show running out of fresh ideas – let alone fresh blood.
Now aged 77, Blethyn is 12 years older than the compulsory retirement age for officers of Vera’s rank. And while Vera should be tending the roses at her enviable Holy Island cottage rather than chasing criminals, Blethyn herself must be tiring of the early mornings, long days and anonymous mobile dressing trailers involved in location shoots.
The main location in this possibly last-ever episode was the North Yorkshire seaside town of Redcar, whose esplanade provided the exteriors for a chip shop whose co-owner had been discovered dead in his freezer. Although the deceased had been battered, it wasn’t in the traditional chip-shop sense of the word.
The victim, a seemingly successful entrepreneur and family man called Scott (played, understandably briefly, by Scott Turnbull) naturally turned out to be anything but. In fact, he had debts, a secret lover, dodgy business practices and a shady past down South.
The suspects were duly lined up, including a two-timed girlfriend and her admirer (her son’s football coach), a disgruntled employee, a rival chip-shop owner, and an angry fish supplier. The latter was played by Shane Atwooll, who’s currently portraying the baddie in Channel 5’s Finders Keepers, which might have made him doubly fishy in some viewers’ minds.
An elderly woman with dementia provided the plot’s missing link, but as Vera remarked (perhaps mirroring the thoughts of more demanding whodunit fans) “When did a grandmother come out of the woodwork?”. And in pure Miss Marple-style, our titular sleuth was able to separate the real killer from her accomplice by the way the latter poured a cup of tea.
For Vera fans, however, perhaps of more importance than piecing together this week’s murder mystery was the task of discerning clues as to the future of the show itself. The episode ended in Vera’s cottage garden with Vera and Joe Ashworth baptising a bottle of whisky and toasting “colleagues”. Did this signal the fact that Vera would be stepping down while the rest of the team takes over?
That would make sense of the producers bringing back David Leon. After all, Jon Morrison, who plays Vera’s long-term colleague DC Kenny Lockhart, is only a few years younger than Blethyn, while newcomer Rhiannon Clements, who plays DC Steph Duncan, would be too junior to lead the team.
And it wouldn’t be the first time that a long-running ITV cop drama has carried on without its lead character – Taggart famously continuing for 16 years followed the death of its lead actor (and eponymous detective) Mark McManus.
But Vera without Vera and her trademark green fishing hat and raincoat? It’s surely unthinkable.