Every detective has to have a gimmick. Vera Stanhope’s is that she’s from the north. Apart from wearing a floppy hat, I can’t see that she’s got much more going for her than that – although on television nowadays, a regional accent is as rare as a ballet.
Vera (ITV, Sundays 8pm) works for the fictional Northumberland and City Police and Brenda Blethyn portrays her as a highly strung woman constantly shouting to be heard over the crash of waves. The scenery surrounding her is breathtaking – and is filmed so well. The bodies pile up on cliff edges, stone-walled farms or in fields of long green reeds. Viewing from Kent, where we’re squeezed into the suburbs like bourgeois sardines, I’m envious of an empty land where you can shoot someone with an elephant gun and nobody would notice. “In Sunderland, no one can hear you scream.”
