User Reviews

This episode has numerous twists and turns, with it culminating in the investigation of a football (soccer in the USA) coach's (a male) abuse of an underage boy in his team several years ago. Watching this, you almost thought the writers would venture into LGBTI territory in Northumbria but you could sense it really they wanted to go there.

While I'm glad the series is back for a ninth season, due to Brenda Blethyn's excellent lead performance, I feel this episode was not as great as it could have been.

First, it's way too convenient that a woman gets out of a car, soon gets murdered, and on the way to her death any number of people could have done it. Also we weren't told how far the car was from the wooded area where she was killed; and it seems implausible that she goes from a busy city intersection to a wooded area so quickly to meet her demise.

The other thing that annoyed me about this episode was all the people Vera interviewed were covering up something and lying to her. You mean to tell me not one person in this investigation would be honest? The lesbian artist lied twice (first about when she returned to her apartment, then later about not leaving the art studio). The soccer coach lied about his whereabouts. His wife also lied about her whereabouts. The father of the kid who was killed years ago was not totally forthcoming with Vera either.

Then we had a retired detective Vera visited twice, and he was covering things up about the original investigation. Not to mention coworkers of the recent victim who were giving Vera the runaround. The individual who came closest to being honest was the sister of the prisoner who had committed suicide, but even her point of view had been clouded by her unwillingness to acknowledge her brother was gay and had sexually abused a 15 year old.

At one point Vera and DS Healy realize the recent murder victim was having an affair with the artist. Then they think she must've been having an affair with the dead prisoner's sister. Why? Just because she had texted the woman a few times? That would automatically mean they'd been sexually involved? All this was before the big reveal that the soccer coach had been sexually abused by the prisoner years ago and that a homosexual cover-up and blackmail was at the root of the first murder.

We even had a stereotypical scene where the artist was afraid her parents would cut her off financially if they found out she was a lesbian. And on top of that, we learned she had once stalked another woman, when she was in college. Not one gay or lesbian person was presented in this episode as self-confident or well-adjusted.

One thing I did like about this episode was how the newer murder connected to the older murder. So actually Vera ended up investigating two murders. The death of the woman at the beginning was in the same place as the death of the person who had died years ago.

I also liked the way this particular story required Vera to look at how things get muddled within the justice system. So in a way she was questioning how the original confession was obtained, how the jury had reached a verdict, and how the recent victim had been trying to reopen the old case.