Vera: TV’s brainiest sleuth
The mac is back, solving another string of curious cases, David Stephenson learns
BRENDA BLETHYN is celebrating – and so is ITV. Against all expectations, and after nine series, Vera was Britain’s second most popular drama show last year, falling in behind the BBC’s runaway success Bodyguard. Barely able to hide her happiness as we chat at ITV’s London HQ, she says: “We’re all delighted with it!”
Why does she think the detective drama has been such a hit? “One 12-year-old in the audience when we were doing a Q&A said it was his and his friends’ favourite show.
“I said, ‘Why do you like it?’ He said, ‘Well, she’s in charge telling all these men what to do, and she’s funny. She makes us laugh’. So it’s great that we’ve got young people who like the show. And then we learn this morning that it’s the highest rated ITV drama. Great!”
After nine years, surely it’s about time Vera was given a promotion, I suggest. “Well, yes, but Vera doesn’t ask to be liked. Her team didn’t warm to her to begin with. Then they did. And the audience go,
‘Well, what did they see in this woman? Oh yeah, she’s all right’, and they warm to her.”
However it’s not her team who generally deliver the killer. It’s Vera’s superb brain power which drives the show and the crime solving. She has many lightbulb moments, not least in the first episode of the new series, when we have a “double twist”.
In the story, DCI Vera Stanhope investigates the murder of Joanne Castell, whose body is found on a landfill site. Eventually Vera discovers that Joanne, a trainee forensic psychologist, has been investigating the original crime of a former prisoner. The revelation is the beginning of a story with many red herrings...
“Maybe it’s a sort of lateral thinking that Vera does,” says Brenda. “For me though, it’s solving puzzles, riddles and brain teasers. I love them. And from a young age too. My dad and me... we didn’t have a telly or the wireless because we hadn’t paid the bill or something. So my dad would set me and my brothers a riddle to solve, which would keep us quiet for an hour or so.”
Brenda, 72 years young, was born in the seaside town of Ramsgate in Kent, the youngest of nine children. Despite her relatively poor upbringing, her parents introduced her to films, taking her to the cinema once a week.
“Funnily enough,” she says, “Ramsgate started an international film festival two years ago. It was a tiny little affair, begun by a local person. It was lovely. And I saw someone in one of the films and thought, ‘Gosh, he’s good’. He was an actor named Gerard McDermott and I asked him to audition for Vera, which he did. He’s in the first episode of the new series, the father of the victim.”
She also championed a co-star to direct an episode in the last series. Brenda has a very generous personality which shines through from the moment you meet her. And she shows her puzzle-solving talents by setting me a cryptic crossword clue which I fail to crack during the interview. As punishment, she gives me two others to solve on my way home.
Would she direct an episode of Vera? “No, I do what I do. I do make lots of comments on the floor. I pipe up and don’t know when to shut up sometimes. But what I do, and what I do to the best of my ability, is to act.
“You always need new ideas coming into a production from directors, otherwise all the episodes would be the same.”
VERA continues to wear her stylish mac throughout most of the episodes. It’s her signature look. “It’s the same mac but I’ve got more than one. They’re identical because there was a scene where I had to wade into the sea. If you do a retake, you’ve got to wait while you dry it. So there are several if you want to do any retakes.”
And the hat? Vera rarely seems to take it off, even inside. “She forgets she’s got it on! She just takes it off when she can remember!”
The series could even be something of an export. “A friend was on a theatre tour in Italy and went down an alley full of expensive designer shops and he said he nearly fainted because standing in the mirror was ‘Vera’. It was the hat, the mac and scarf... it just looked like her! It’s haute couture Vera!”
She adds: “I think there should be a Vera ‘line’. There is a store in the Quayside Market [in Newcastle]. A big sign saying Vera Hats! So I went to the store and got talking to the owner when a couple turned up who said they were fans. The owner, who was talking to them, gestured to me but they didn’t recognise me out of costume. They finally twigged!”
Is it easy for her to play Vera? “Well, I like the practicality of her, I really do. I’m perhaps a little more vain than her, I might look in a mirror before I go out the door, but not for any great length of time. Vera, I don’t think she’s got a mirror.”
And it seems Brenda’s practicality also knows no bounds. “I’ve plumbed a toilet on my own,” she reveals. “I’ve laid a floor. I’ve taken a fireplace out on my own. I just did it with brute force. That was a long, long time ago and you will be pleased to know that I don’t do it any more. Thank God.
“A lot of things, when you read up, you will know if you can do it. But when you’ve got no money, you’re starting out and being paid peanuts and you need a job doing, you might have to do it yourself.”
Brenda Blethyn, it turns out, is a woman of many talents.
Vera, ITV, next Sunday, 8pm