"Vera" is a sort of cross between "Columbo" (with its slightly disheveled, idiosyncratic protagonist wearing a raincoat and driving a beat-up auto), "Kojak" (with the protagonist often ill-tempered and lacking patience with her subordinates and others) and "Wallander" (with desolate landscapes and grisly murder a-plenty). Brenda Blethyn is a superb actor and someone with a strong allure as the sharpest cop on the block by far. The plots are very intricate but the characters seem less wholesome than, say, in "Foyle's War" or other cop dramas, which is good because the overall theme is murder in contemporary England, which lacks the historic charm of period pieces. The Brits do this sort of thing very well, and one can only imagine that the reason these shows don't make prime time network TV in the US is because too many Americans would have trouble understanding the accents. It is also slow moving, which adds to the mood very nicely, and one can imagine Americans losing patience because there isn't enough poppy theme music a-la Jerry Bruckheimer. (I am an American, by the way, before you think I'm dissing the US.) Each episode is 90 minutes without commercials, so they are all like movies in themselves, just as with "Wallander," "DCI Banks," and others in the genre. Highly recommended.