After 14 years as Vera, Brenda Blethyn finds out why she got the role

Ann Cleeves, the deceptively mild-mannered crime novelist who created DCI Vera Stanhope, eponymous star of the long-running TV series, says she didn’t go on set too often. Even though they filmed around where she lives in Northumbria, she would drop in only once during each of its 14 seasons. That was enough, however, to give her a sense of the company’s esprit de corps. Last time round, she recalls, she talked to a prop-maker who had been with Vera almost since it started.

“I remember him saying: ‘What you need to know, Ann, about this set is that it’s a family.’” She mimics him nodding towards Brenda Blethyn. “‘And she’s the matriarch!’”

For 14 years, Blethyn’s Vera has been one of the reliably entertaining and beloved characters on television, a ramshackle detective who eats in her car, sleeps in her chair, wears a sludge-coloured gabardine raincoat and bucket hat – you can buy souvenir knock-offs of that hat, I’m told, at nearby Newcastle’s Sunday market – and always nails her murderer.

Brenda Blethyn in a scene from the final season of Vera.Credit: Helen Williams

Vera is cosy-on-the-couch telly, but not in a crass way. The news that the final episode, The Dark Wives, based on Cleeves’ most recent book, would be her last hurrah was hardly a shock – Blethyn is 79 – but it’s a bit like calling a halt to mac’n’cheese. What will we do for televisual comfort food now?

Blethyn admits she called time on it. “They [commercial network ITV] would have carried on for as much time as I was willing to do it. But for a couple of years, I’ve been thinking I miss my family a bit, because I’m away for six months of the year. And that not only was I getting on, but my family was getting on. I thought maybe I was being selfish, being up in Northumbria all the time. Because I just loved it. I loved working on Vera.”

Blethyn looks much younger than her years; she is also blessed with a young, resonant voice, bundles of enthusiasm and a ferocious work ethic; she has actually made a film – a comedy about Queen Mary I’s reign called Fools – since The Dark Wives wrapped. But the hours were gruelling: up at 5.30am for make-up, 12 hours on set, more hours spent travelling from one remote rural location to the next. “And I couldn’t go home at weekends because it was too far [she lives in the south of England]. I hadn’t had a summer, I realised, for 14 years.”

She was already 64 when she was first offered the role. A real-life police detective would have retired by then. “I was even thinking of slowing down a bit,” she says. “But I got the call and thought ‘ooh’ and went to get the books to see what the character was like.” She read The Crow Trap (1999), set among wildlife surveyors monitoring Northumbria’s otter population.

“And I’m halfway through it and there’s no mention of this woman. No mention! And I’m thinking ‘I could swear my agent said it was like a leading, central part, but no matter, I’ll carry on.’” Eventually, there was a murder. Enter Vera. “Really scruffy, looking like a bag lady, great big woman. This is Vera Stanhope. And I thought: ‘What did they think of me for?’”

Blethyn says she was the only person on set who was never cold, because Vera wore so many clothes.Credit: Helen Williams

Of course, she loved the character. “So then I’m thinking, ‘Oh I hope I get the job!’” Ann Cleeves laughs. The people at ITV were desperate to create a vehicle for Blethyn, she says, in the wake of her winning the best actress award in Cannes for Secrets and Lies, Mike Leigh’s 1996 drama. Blethyn looks surprised. “See, I didn’t even know that,” she says.

Cleeves is 10 years younger than Blethyn. They have done many on-stage events over the years and clearly have a cup-of-tea comfort with each other; our interview starts with a mutually agreeable discussion of how television isn’t so exciting now that you don’t have to wait a week for the next episode.

“It’s immediate gratification, isn’t it?” says Blethyn. “Nobody saves up for anything any more. If you want a car, you just buy one.” Cleeves nods in agreement.

Blethyn’s performance over the years, Cleeves says, has certainly had its impact on her novels. “I’d like to think my Vera is exactly as she was when she first appeared on the page,” she says. “But obviously ... when an actor of Brenda’s stature and skill portrays somebody you’ve created, you are going to learn something about that character. Sometimes it’s just a look, or the way she turns and walks away from somebody. I see it and I understand her a bit better.”

Just as important to the series is the stern Northumbrian countryside, with its wind-blasted moors and huge tides sweeping across the sands. Blethyn is rhapsodic about the locations; she was the only person on set who was never cold, she says, because Vera wore so many clothes. But even Northumbria has changed over Vera’s long career.

“Whitley Bay was a really scuzzy, faded, rundown seaside town when I came here,” says Cleeves. “Now it’s become quite gentrified. There are nice coffee shops and a lovely bookshop. That’s obviously changed the way I look at the place, but also the people.”

Filming of the final season.Credit: ITV

Clearly, they will both miss the series, as will the fans. It is one of Britain’s most beloved homegrown art forms: the murder mystery peopled with appealingly odd characters, preferably set in a village, with enough dead bodies to be intriguing but no blood or gore.

Vera is a direct descendant of the so-called golden age of crime stories, says Cleeves. “I’m not a huge fan of Agatha Christie, but we had Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, all that history.

“What we do is keep that structure and keep to their rules, with twists and a surprise ending, but because we are writing about now – and we’re writing about police officers – we can look at social and criminal justice.” Drug-dealing, domestic violence, runaway children: they’re all in there. “So there is still that fun element of the puzzle, but also looking in more depth at real issues.”

Key to that, of course, is Vera’s rough sympathy as she deals with the hapless, mean-spirited, weak and misled, some of whom are murderers, calling her suspects “pet” and “love” and chivvying her staff like an Old English sheepdog.

What will her legacy be? “I think the legacy will be that we can have strong women of a certain age in positions of authority,” says Cleeves. “And that kindness matters.” And you, Brenda? Blethyn pauses, then finds the right answer. “Exactly as Ann said,” she says.

The final season of Vera screens on the ABC over two nights, April 26-27, at 7.30pm.