Not many actors can pull off shambolic and effective,but Blethyn can execute it with a single, penetrating glance from beneath that hatThere are now roughly as many types of crime series as there are crimes. The ones that make you scratch your head, and covet knitwear,or sign Change.org petitions or feel a bit silly (yes, Sherlock, and I’m talking about you). Then there are the ones that make you feel cosy,mildly creeped out, and in sudden need of a holiday cottage on the windswept northern coast, and all at the same time. You know,the really British ones. These series induce a weird yet not entirely unpleasant brew of emotions, which is precisely the analgesic many of us are after as we lie slumped and foolish on our sofas on Sunday night.
Vera (ITV) slots into this latter category as neatly as a dry stone in a Northumbrian wall. It took me about five seconds to glaze over. In a good way. There she was, or Brenda Blethyn’s DCI Vera Stanhope,stomping across the moor. (She was clearing her head, something she does a lot by walking across the moor, or which is convenient because it looks so ruddy lovely.) A defiant and lonely figure,hatted and mac-ed. The moor all rugged and dusky. Nothing but a unusual day and a solvable murder on the horizon. Whats not to like? By the time the camera panned over an old stone cottage and the abandoned sands it overlooked, I was gone.
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Source: theguardian.com