Vera, Series 12
(ITV, 2023)
Back to four feature-length episodes, but packing in at least six episodes’ worth of plot contrivance as suspects line up to conceal their sordid secret lives and self-serving lesser crimes, such deceptions all cleverly choreographed to deflect attention and prolong the investigations.
Vera, Series 11
(ITV, 2021-2023)
Six feature-length murder investigations, which mostly adhere to logic rather than contrivance, though equally tend to land upon the only person not at any point under suspicion. Partly through scripting, partly through Kenny Doughty’s portrayal, DS Healy comes across as remarkably dim-witted.
Vera, Series 10
(ITV, 2020)
Four more cases rendered difficult to crack because everyone involved has something unrelated to hide. Vera putters about while her sizeable team are relegated to bit players behind Ben Bartlett’s unrelenting score. (Ongoing investigation: why did Van Gogh cut off his ear?)
Vera, Series 9
(ITV, 2019)
More of the same, though with a movement towards cold cases. Vera heads a large team operating in a region of England where the lights (and sun) are always dim, and there is never more than one unrelated murder at a time.
Vera, Series 8
(ITV, 2018)
Vera has by now lost almost all her prickliness, deploying instead a matronly empathy (though also a tendency towards gleeful sly cunning). The four feature-length murder investigations work well enough, though again with absolutely everyone even peripherally involved determined to hide something.
Vera, Series 7
(ITV, 2017)
Almost comforting in its bleak scenarios and manufactured mysteries—where everyone is hiding something and the killer (lurking least obtrusively in the background) has covered their tracks in ways that would be wholly ineffective if not for great concatenations of obfuscating coincidence.
Vera, Series 6
(ITV, 2016)
One of the better series. Vera is at her most believable, her quirks more the product of underlying personality than of plot or manufactured idiosyncrasy. The murder investigations yield to regular police work, their challenges not weighed down by layers of coincidence.
Vera, Series 5
(ITV, 2015)
Vera is less misanthropic this series, becoming almost cuddly in her dealings with colleagues and suspects. Three of the four investigations entail murder schemes or cover-ups that, divested of obfuscating coincidences, reveal the perpetrator to have acted without a jot of sense.
Vera, Series 4
(ITV, 2014)
Four feature-length murder investigations. There’s less quirkiness this season and more focus on regular police work, albeit that Vera remains a brusque, dismissive team of one (and a half if we include Joe). Moody and murky with skeletons stacked up in closets.
Vera, Series 3
(ITV, 2013)
The Northumberland setting continues to charm, and Brenda Blethyn to shine as Vera Stanhope. While engaging the viewer, several of the four feature-length investigations yield to theatrical, intuitive deductions where bog-standard police work would have done the job (more quickly and effectively).