To think that Vera is the worst crime drama of our age?

[MorrisZapp]

I love a cosy ITV procedural, and happily go along with the expositional dialogue and hoary old stereotyped characters but fuck my old boots this is unwatchable stuff.

Tinkly 'suspense' music, mugging to camera, and her grating voice drove me over to Grand Designs by the second ad break. I believe it's on season 11, so clearly it's a much loved show in some quarters.

YABU - how dare you, I love watching detectives two decades past retirement age turn up and call a corpse 'pet'

YANBU - it used to be finely nuanced, edgy stuff but I feel it's lost it's way somewhat

She has the worst Northumbrian accent ever, she can't call herself an actress really but that aside it's worth watching for the scenery alone.

First sidekick Joe was a genuine accent and so made it feel much more authentic. I miss Joe.

@RampantIvy

I really enjoy watching Vera, but knowing the north east reasonably well we can spot some holes in the plots. There isn't a ferry from North Shields to Tynemouth, for example (or maybe we got that wrong )

The other one which sticks out like a sore thumb is the suggestion that Vera lives on Holy Island. It's nearly an hour and a half's drive from where she works - and it's cut off for several hours every day by the tide!

Yes, we spotted that as well @ProfessionalWeirdo.

I think Northumberland tourist board have asked the production company to do this

@VickyEadieofThigh

I know all the police procedurals have pathologists doing stuff they don't do in real life, but I used to know one in real life and he said it made him feel stabby that they showed the one in Silent Witness behaving like a police officer.

That is what drives me nuts (almost stabby) about Silent Whitness. Other programmes also have Coroners out and about investigating. Viewers have a decent understanding of how the world works these days. Why do they want to stretch it beyond credulity?

Yabu I love Vera and all other cosy mystery dramas

I like Vera, I like seeing a woman of a certain age and temperament detecting. After a shit day at work, I find it relaxing. That includes all the plot holes, and me shouting at the telly, ‘That wouldn’t happen!’ Great viewing for me.

Brenda Blethyn is 75!
Another plot hole
Detectives retire a lot earlier than that don't they? Mind you, David Jason played DI Jack Frost until he was 70. I don't want Vera to retire yet though.

DH and I love a good (and not so good ) detective story. We have been rewatching some old Dalziel and Pascoe episodes. There is a new series of Brokenwood Mysteries on UK Drama now as well.

@Purpletomato

I tried the Vera books as I loved the Shetland books. Found the Vera books awful. Haven't seen either TV version.

Oooh, now the Shetland TV series is wonderful. I haven't read the books so I don't know how it compares, but please try the tv ones, they're very good.

I watch Vera for that little "hmf!" sound she makes whenever someone tells her something that might or might not be true. I want to do that sound!

Love Vera

Love Vera and Midsummer Murders. Preferred MM with Tom Barnaby as I find his cousin a bit dour. I also like the grittier Police dramas too, though.
Enjoy Silent Witness although I realise that in real life Nicky et al would be beavering away at the post mortems and not hallucinating about helping to find murderers.

Gallivanting!! Why doesn't Mumsnet have an edit button fgs?

Trouble is, we are all so familiar with the genre now, it takes a very special writer and director to come up with something original nowadays.

Everybody! Watch Hetty Wainthrop with the fantastic Patricia Routledge and a young Dominic Monaghan.

Lancashire based, cosy up to a point but quite often a bit of grit in there too.

Vera too stylised, too grey and too predictable.

Love Hetty Wainthrop

Watched Hetty for years, love it. They don't make them like this anymore.

Omg I love this post as this is what I thought about Vera as I hadn’t really watched a full episode before as I am a huge fan of Midsomer Murders and Frost but you have to watch it from the beginning to get into it.You cannot start watching it from season 6 as there is a lot of history .
The same as you wouldn’t watch the last season of Only Fools and Horses, you need to start from the beginning .

I had great hopes for Father Brown when that came out. It's bloody awful. The characters are really annoying. And they've clearly done no research into the Catholic Church in the 1950s. He plays it as if he's a C of E vicar, rather than an RC priest. The whole village would not have been Catholic and he wouldn't have had a very old church building. (Yes I'm a pedant)

Always enjoy watching Vera even though we spend large parts of each episode going "You just wouldn't do that!" I don't know the area very well but I do recognise some locations and know you wouldn't get from one to another in the seemingly short times they do.

I was puzzled this series that Vera has moved house; she used to live up in the hills miles from anywhere in her Dad's old house, didn't she? I think in the early days he was not long dead and she moved in there to clear his stuff etc. Has this move to Holy Island been mentioned / explained in the series and I've missed it? I did say to DH probably the house in the hills has been sold and the new owner doesn't want filming there.

How come it wasn't on tonight and has been replaced by Endeavour? Are there only two episodes in a series?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought how on earth did the sensitive, respectful Endeavour turn into the judgemental sexist pig that was Morse? I can't bear to watch old episodes of Morse these days.

I can not stand it.

Which is a pity because I love a good drama / murder to solve

@Toddlerteaplease

I had great hopes for Father Brown when that came out. It's bloody awful. The characters are really annoying. And they've clearly done no research into the Catholic Church in the 1950s. He plays it as if he's a C of E vicar, rather than an RC priest. The whole village would not have been Catholic and he wouldn't have had a very old church building. (Yes I'm a pedant)

^ Oh yes a thousand times this! They have got the Catholic parish all wrong (save perhaps for the Irish housekeeper) and the main actor Mark Williams is just horrendously wooden and unconvincing in the role.

I also wanted to love Vera, as I love the area it's set in, but I could never get on with it somehow.

Scott and Bailey is my all time favourite but it seems to have disappeared.

We always comment on the oldest catholic church in the entire of England when watching Father Brown

Scott and Bailey has disappeared, because one of them is on a submarine.

I enjoyed Father Brown when it first started but I think it went a bit awry in the latter series.

One thing that really irritated me about the latter episodes was the use of modern idioms, words and attitudes that would not have been around in the 1950.

If you're going to write a television programme set in a different era you really need to double check you're getting things right.

They wouldn't get Bunty Windermere turning up in a mini skirt or whipping out a mobile phone so why put words into the characters' mouths that they wouldn't have used.

I agree OP, it’s so bloody dreary and flat.