Ann Cleeves with Brenda Blethyn at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (Image: Express)
The millions of fans of no-nonsense detective Vera Stanhope will be delighted to hear her creator is not planning to kill her off in the final instalment of the long-running series. Bestselling author Ann Cleeves announced late last year that she was writing her 12th Vera novel, which is as yet untitled and due to be published next year.
She made a special guest appearance alongside actress Brenda Blethyn, who brought the beloved detective to life on screen, at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, which is supported by the Express. In their only interview before appearing on stage for the festival’s closing event last Sunday, Ann, 71, revealed she has finished writing the last Vera novel in what she hopes is “a fitting way to end it”.
She adds: “I loved writing it. Brenda hasn’t read it yet, so I’ll be sending it to her as she’s such a great reader.”
Brenda, 80, says: “She’ll still be there floating about, she’s not dead, is she?”
Ann replies: “No, I haven’t killed her. I can tell you I haven’t killed her.”
The last Vera novel will mark the end of an era that has not only changed the lives of Ann and Brenda, but also of the cast and crew who worked on the TV adaptation which ran for 56 episodes across 14 series on ITV from May 2011 until January last year.
It has also made the North East of England a destination for other film crews, spawned Vera tourist trails and went a long way to making bucket hats fashionable for the first time since the 1990s.
The first novel featuring Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope was The Crow Trap, published in 1999, but the bucket hat and Mackintosh wearing sleuth only ppears mid-way through this book as Ann was not trying to write a detective series.
At the time she had a young editor who had told her no one wanted to read police procedurals anymore.
Ann says: “I was lucky, because the editor that had said they wanted just standalones at the time, that series weren’t selling, she married a musician and moved to Australia, so I then had an editor who said it was alright to write a series, and Vera fit.”
As it built a loyal following of readers it was optioned for television after producer Elaine Collins discovered a copy of The Crow Trap in a charity shop in North London while looking for holiday reading.
Fortuitously the books executive for ITV Studios was looking for a new female detective to fill its Sunday night drama slot.
Brenda Blethyn as DCI Vera Stanhope in the long-running ITV drama (Image: ITV)
But Ann says it was only when Brenda came on board that she knew the TV drama would happen, as she had been Oscar-nominated for her performances in the films Secrets & Lies and Little Voice.
The mother-of-two, who lives in Whitley Bay, Northumberland, says: “I was so nervous because I so wanted it to happen, and I’d seen Brenda in films and thought she was terrific. I suppose I was worried that she’d come and hate it, or hate the North East!”
Brenda did not expect to land the role of Vera: “It’s not a part I would normally have been offered. I mean, she’s her own woman and often I played, up to that point, like the little lady indoors!
“But to be a woman in charge of a team of men, I wouldn’t have thought I was the first choice. Elaine Collins, who was the producer, also saw the humour in Ann’s books, and thought that I could bring that to it in a realistic way without trying to be funny.”
She adds: “I went along to a meeting and it was like they were waiting for me to say whether I was going to do it or not.
“And I was wondering, ‘Oh, are they going to like me? Are they going to want me?’ But I was thrilled and then at the read-through, who would be sitting there but Ann Cleeves!”
Before this Brenda, who lives in Ramsgate, Kent, went out and bought the first Vera books: “I wasn’t familiar with the books, and I rushed straight out and bought them. And I just loved them.
“She’s actually introduced in The Crow Trap but that’s not the first episode we did. That was, I think, the third episode we did.
“I loved the books but I thought, ‘Well, they’re never going to give me this part,’ But of course, in The Crow Trap, I was halfway through it before she even appeared. I thought, ‘Well, it’s not even a featured part this Vera! That’s why they’re thinking of me; she’s in and out in five minutes!’ But I couldn’t put it down. I just loved the character.”
Brenda Blethyn and Ann Cleeves being interviewed on stage at Harrogate festival by Steph McGovern (Image: Richard Maude)
Brenda thinks TV viewers and readers fell in love with Vera because she broke the mould for female detectives, which until that point had been shraply-dressed lipstick-wearing characters like DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, played by Helen Mirren.
“You wouldn’t normally see a woman of her age and her persona being a central character. I mean, what other ones were there? So, it was a departure from the norm,” says the actress.
“And to have a woman of a certain age who didn’t actually care what she looked like, and didn’t need that to hold people’s attention, or to have any authority,” adds the writer.
“What makes it different is that you’re not thinking, ‘Will she have it off with so-and-so,’ She doesn’t need somebody else in her life to make her whole and real.”
Brenda adds: “I really knew that I would enjoy the journey of that character and I am an independent woman.
“I liked almost everything about the woman, to be honest with you. It’s the fact that she’s fair.”
Ann, who also created the Shetland series starring Jimmy Perez which was adapted into a long-running BBC drama, says Brenda quickly became Vera and when writing the novels she hears her voice.
And the cast and crew, which spent six months at a time filming in the North East, quickly became like a family.
“I really miss it, that last couple of days on set was really moving and then the wrap party in St James’ Park as well,” says Ann.
“The great thing about Vera is that it’s changed the perception of the North East for some people, because before that, there was The Likely Lads, and When the Boat Comes In, and Catherine Cookson, and the North East seemed just sad and poor and miserable.
“And I can remember after the first series someone coming up to me and saying, ‘It’s so good that Vera shows we have nice houses up here in the North East!’
Brenda Blethyn (right), with Ann Cleeves (left), at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (Image: Asadour Guzelian)
After 14 series Brenda decided to walk away from the role she proudly says was her most enjoyable on TV, to pursue other opportunities like Channel 4 drama A Woman of Substance and to spend more time at her home with husband Michael Mayhew, an art director.
While this was a tough choice she says she has no regrets: “It was a hard decision but even a few seasons before that I thought, ‘I’ve really got to spend more time at home.’
“And I thought, ‘Oh, I can’t give it up. I can’t! I’ll just do another season’. But then it became obvious my home life needed me.
“So no regrets. I’m just so proud of it.”
In further good news for the millions of fans of the TV drama across the globe, Brenda goes on to say with a twinkle in her eye: “I wish they’d do a special, or something.”
Brenda, who has kept one of the two Macs worn by Vera along with a bucket hat, with the other Mac in the Discovery Museum in Newcastle, adds: “It would be lovely to get that hat and Mac on again. One more time would be great.”
Ann’s next book out will be the fourth in the Matthew Venn series set in North Devon in October, titled The Dying Light, which is set in the middle of a heatwave with two teenage girls – one the daughter of an up-and-coming politician – staying at the family’s holiday home when one of them is found drowned in its swimming pool.
This novel is her 40th in a career spanning 40 years and she is also planning to host a writing retreat next May at the bird observatory on Fair Isle, which is where she met her late husband Tim, a keen birdwatcher, more than 50 years ago.
But when asked about the enduring popularity of Vera, she says with a warm smile: “Vera will outlast both Brenda and I.”