drednm Gutsy, gritty police drama series has an unusual format and a great star: Brnda Blethyn.This is not a weekly series, nor is it a miniseries. It's a yearly series of four 90-minutes movies that loosely tie up together, especially in the character of Vera Stanhope, a driven and crotchety character who excels in her work but who has trouble connecting to the people around her or in dealing with her past life.Brenda Blethyn is just perfect as the middle-aged copper and just as changeable as the North England weather. She's just as likely to lash out at her colleague as she is the suspects in the series of murders she must solve.Chief among the supporting cast are David Leon as Ver'a sergeant Joe Asworth and Peter Ritter as the weirdly comic pathologist Billy Cartwight. But there are plenty of other quirky copper and suspects lurking about the Yorshire dale and towns. The location shooting is quite stunning as well.The mysteries are based on characters created by Ann Cleeves and most of them are excellent. It's never easy to guess the killer. You won't see a parade of famous actors but that works in the show's favor.A great show for mystery fans and those who like great acting.

PartialMovieViewer Let's start out with the bad first and end with the good. As they say, the last thing said is the first thing remembered. That grating voice and pushy attitude is way over-the-top. I almost get nosebleeds listening to that nag whine. I truly prefer shows from the UK. They are normally so much better than that puerile ginned-up Hollyweirdo tripe forced down the US populace. What our elites over here lack in originality we make up in stupid scripts and moronic political pandering - something I can do without. This show has superb writing- the plots are in depth yet easy to follow. The scenery...ah the scenery...without CGI...OMG...drop dead gorgeous. Nice, Vera nice. I really think the directors do the absolute best with the cards they are dealt. My only problem is with the main character. Hand me a chalkboard and a thousand fingernails running across the surface...it would be an improvement. Watch this show for content alone...and you have a winner...otherwise...take an aspirin first.

joeline-03167 DCI Vera Stanhope and her various supporting characters reach out and grab you. There's no way to express the raw emotions that we feel when we watch each and every episode. From Season 1 through Season 5 we've held on waiting for the next season to show up, watching the episodes from first to last over and over again. There is always something new to notice, another detail to pick up. The brooding landscape feeds the story and the story feeds the landscape in a cycle that somehow makes the moors and the chill countryside part and parcel of each other. Led by the incomparable Brenda Blethyn the cast is superb and the characters are impeccably played. We are now starting to watch Season 6 and yet dreading seeing the last episode of this batch, knowing it will be another year before we see the next. Here in the United States, where good TV programming is hard to find, Vera shows up as the best British TV has to offer, for which we are decidedly grateful.

reggie-at-random Gloomy, shiveringly depressing, "Vera" is beautifully filmed with impressive production values, in low monotones to set a consistent mood. The plots are weirdly desperate, the music lugubrious, and the resolutions formulaic.Critical actors (victims, v.-to-be, suspects etc.) crank their performances to the max emote early on, with nowhere to go. Wiser direction could control this but it happens so regularly it feels intentional. Meanwhile, Vera straggles around the darkly filmed landscape of Yorkshire, with no apparent awareness of basic police protocol (like back up when you're entering a problematic isolated house of a potentially dangerous suspect) and chews the scenery regularly at crisis points, i.e. she freaks out over discovering her sergeant concussed at the bottom of basement stairs while the incarcerated victim seems perfectly calm. Vera doesn't reach for her mobile but babbles uncontrollably slapping Joe around. Hum.I'd call this terribly unprofessional (as an actor AND as her character's status). But wait. She is supposed to be damaged right? Do we forgive this as fiction? Artistic license? Naive assumptions? One wonders: this woman's a walking/stumbling disaster of a burnout case if her out of control emotions are anything to go by. More generous reviewers call her character interpretation "passionate". Only in film I guess. Despite its ambitions, this series ironically has the grime but lacks realistic "realism". Vera's example? I'd call it nightmare leadership and I don't find it particularly entertaining.Too vividly it reminds me of the scarier classic menopause symptoms I've had to deal with in professional life. Were I on her policing 'team', or forced into any association, I'd seriously be steering clear of her at all times. As I will the rest of the series.