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Brenda Blethyn has had a long and distinguished career but she so inhabits the lead role in Vera (ITV1) that I now struggle to picture her in anything else. Sure, there have been plenty of performances in which she didn’t wear a fishing hat and bustle about giving orders in a North-East accent, but none spring to mind.
The Rising Tide was set on Holy Island, where a group of old friends reunite every few years. One of them is found hanged in an apparent suicide after a boozy night, and eagle-eyed DCI Vera Stanhope spots that he’s barefoot and the soles of his shoes are clean but there’s mud on the bed, meaning that somebody else stood on it. One of the good things about Vera is that there’s no messing about when it comes to gathering evidence.
The causeway to Lindisfarne plays a starring role. The Newcastle Chronicle regularly features drivers who have ignored warnings about the tide and required rescue, so there’s always something faintly alarming about watching cars driving through the water. The dangers were made clear in the episode, with one victim drowning years ago and another lucky to escape. It turned out that Rick, the hanged man, had left a whopping great clue in a book he was writing. He’d changed the title to 1982, indicating that events in that year were worthy of investigation.
These pointers are helpful when the mystery needs to be wrapped up in two hours. Save for a couple of red herrings, it was all efficiently done. The plot wasn’t wildly thrilling but we watch for the characters. Vera herself is pleasingly old-school and no-nonsense, but she has a heart – sympathetic to a woman who told of losing a baby to cot death, and motherly towards the team’s sweet new recruit, PC “Billy” Billington. Jake Ashton-Nelson, who plays him, seems to have a genuine Geordie accent.
Lead roles aside – shows do need a shot of star power – I can never understand why producers don’t always cast local actors. There was an actress here who shall remain nameless but whose attempt at a Northumberland accent should be reported as a crime.
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