Beyond belief | 23 March 2017

As we know from all those newspaper articles and actress interviews, there’s a scandalous lack of high-profile British TV dramas starring women over 40. Indeed, if it wasn’t for No Offence, Unforgotten, Silent Witness, Last Tango in Halifax, The Fall, NW, Agatha Raisin, Broadchurch, Happy Valley and Apple Tree Yard, there’d really only be Vera, which returned to ITV on Sunday.

The Vera in question is DCI Vera Stanhope, who, in the teeth of fierce competition, may well be the most implausible cop on television — even if she does fit snugly into a thriving sub-genre featuring sharp but kindly policewomen whose male colleagues spend much of the time shaking their heads in disbelieving admiration. Playing her with understated relish is Brenda Blethyn, who’s required to put on a Northumbrian accent, a wide selection of shabby clothes and the kind of hat not often seen on TV since the glory days of Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small.

As for the programme itself, its chief characteristic is probably efficiency. On the one hand, it’s hard to imagine many people tuning in with a sense of feverish excitement. On the other, anybody who does happen to watch is unlikely to be left feeling cheated.

Take Sunday’s episode, which unfolded like a more leisurely, more psychologically thoughtful and considerably greyer version of Death in Paradise. A young woman was found murdered on Ternstone Island, a local bird sanctuary optimistically nicknamed ‘the Galapagos of the North’. Yet, who could possibly have killed her, seeing as she was apparently alone on the island at the time?

Undeterred, Vera travelled the photogenic countryside, leaving all the gloomy brooding to the Northumbrian skies, as she gently questioned the woman’s friends and colleagues, taking care to call each of them either ‘love’ or ‘pet’.