The first part of Vera’s swansong is surprisingly emotional ...Middle East

It perfectly sums up the vibe of Vera that when TV’s most sensible detective realises she’s driving in the wrong direction, she doesn’t do a dramatic U-turn in her trusty Land Rover but patiently waits until the next roundabout to head back to where she came from. There might be a murder suspect on the loose but she’s not about to disobey the rules of the road.

As DCI Vera Stanhope, Brenda Blethyn has been sedately solving murders on Tyneside for 14 years on ITV, but these two episodes will be her last.

For her penultimate outing, Vera was juggling two investigations. One was the murder of Zac Martin, a young man recently released from prison where he was serving a sentence for paralysing his best friend in a bar fight. The other was a cold case reopened when a man named Lucas Corbridge, convicted of killing his wife, had his sentence overturned 20 years after the event due to discredited forensic evidence. While everyone else seemed to think it was merely a coincidence that both men were incarcerated on the same prison wing, Vera – naturally – doesn’t believe in coincidences.

It has to be said that this was not one of Vera’s most thrilling plots. This show is never exactly high octane but, until the final showdown on a clifftop, the most action here came from people gathering up paperwork quite quickly. Vera’s team might be the most competent officers on television but their efficiency is largely desk-based (especially for a cold case) and therefore not especially exciting.

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They had no issue juggling two cases simultaneously, but the episode itself struggled. It hopped around between the two investigations making sure that every few minutes, Vera announced that they were definitely connected (as if we didn’t already know that).

In the Zac Martin case, the suspects included the family of the man he put in a wheelchair, who were furious about his early release, his soon to be ex-wife who had rinsed his bank accounts and a dodgy prison officer who was shaking him down for cash. But Vera was convinced that the newly exonerated Corbridge had to be involved and his sister was definitely hiding something.

With the end nigh, the show was evidently building to a more emotional climax than we usually see with Vera, who is always empathetic but rarely sentimental. The offer of a promotion to Chief Superintendent had thrown her: while pleased her talents were being acknowledged, she believes the role to be “all paperwork and politics” and she was dithering about making a decision.

Meanwhile, her loyal Detective Inspector Joe Ashworth was out of sorts – and not just because of his hideous shirt and tie combinations. He was clearly off his game and a kind but firm Vera discovered that he was struggling to move past the death of his father and the fact that he missed a final opportunity to visit him due to work. The resulting argument, where both said things they didn’t mean, outshone the resolution of the case, which felt flimsy by contrast.

Bizarrely we never even found out exactly how Zac was killed beyond being hit with a blunt object (surely the first time in TV detective history that the murder weapon wasn’t vital evidence). It was also a strange move to raise the issue of one suspect displaying controlling and coercive behaviour without following through in any way narratively. 

Like Vera herself, this episode was perfectly solid but it feels as though the best may be being saved for her final swansong.

‘Vera’ continues tomorrow at 8pm on ITV1

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