Ah Vera, pet, you’ll be missed ...Middle East

And so, 14 years after she first donned her signature floppy green hat and practical raincoat, Brenda Blethyn is signing off as DCI Vera Stanhope.

With a no-nonsense approach to chit-chat, a penchant for eating chips out of a paper bag at the side of an A-road, a beady eye for clues everyone else has missed and an ability to deploy the term “pet” with either great affection or utter disdain, Blethyn has ensured that Ann Cleeves’s novels have been in the safest of hands on ITV.

For its final bow, the series combined a classic murder mystery with a more personal story. Vera has rarely given much of herself away, but we finally got a glimpse into what made her into the forthright sleuth we know and love. The opening of a young girl rock climbing and being ordered to steal eggs from a nest turned out to be a flashback to Vera’s childhood and her complicated relationship with her father.

The site of the flashback – three upright stones known as “The Dark Wives” on the fictional Ghyllstead Moor – was where, in the modern day, a local birder had discovered the body of a student named Josh who had been stabbed to death. Tracing his killing to the children’s home where he volunteered, Vera found herself facing another mystery: the disappearance of 16-year-old Chloe, one of the home’s residents.

This was a far more satisfying storyline than that of the slightly pedestrian penultimate episode: here we had a race against time to solve Josh’s murder before anything awful happened to Chloe.

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Complicating matters was the fact that Vera herself was in a foul mood: always brusque, here she was downright rude – snapping and snarking at her poor team who were doing perfectly good police work. Vera had been rattled by her fight with Detective Inspector Joe in the last episode; he had suggested he didn’t need her any more. With her potential promotion to Chief Superintendent weighing on her, she also found herself feeling emotionally connected to the missing Chloe who reminded Vera of herself.

But Vera’s memories did not distract her too heavily from the case which, as per usual, had her charging across most of the North East. Josh’s ex-girlfriend was being shady, her dad’s pick-up truck was in the vicinity of the murder and the children’s home manager was hiding something even before another young person went missing from the same home.

At this point, things got a little darker than Vera generally tends to go with an upsetting second murder and commentary on the profiteering of private care providers (which allowed Vera to deliver some trademark stern admonishment to a self serving care boss).

The climax – which took place during the “Witch Hunt”, a local pagan tradition – veered a little towards comedy when it should have been frightening, but the actual case wasn’t really the point.

Instead, it was learning more about our old faithful Vera as she was on the brink of a major transition. The continuing flashbacks revealed that her dad never wanted her to join the police – “no place for a lass” – and that she has, in essence, been trying to prove him wrong ever since.

Watching the sun set over the moors, Vera was finally able to have a heart-to-heart with Joe and admit that her team were more than capable of carrying on without her. She was never going to be content stuck behind a desk in a more senior role. So, she packed up her things, passed the baton and ventured into a well-deserved happy retirement of birdwatching and dog walking. She even got herself a new hat.

A touching ending for a TV great. Ah Vera, pet, you’ll be missed.

‘Vera’ is streaming on ITVX

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