TV review: Vera, series 6 episode 4 (‘The Sea Glass’), ITV (2016)

This image shows a confrontation early on in the piece between Lee Stonnall (Philip Hill-Pearson), a young fisherman, and DC Hicham Cheradi (Noof Ousellam). Hill-Pearson adds a good deal of tension into this excellent episode. He’s a cracker, always it seems on the edge of breaking out in violence.

Quick with his fists and used to working with knives, Lee stands in decisive contrast to the deceased, Tommy Stonnall, his father, who was, by all accounts, a careful and sensitive man. Ousellam is not the only place where migrants come into the frame in this episode, there’s also Zahra Suleiman (Yusra Warsama), a young mother who’s determined to make a better life for her son.

Vera (Brenda Blethyn) and Aiden (Kenny Doughty) must discover who killed Tommy, and Lee is not the only family member who becomes more and more deeply involved in the case as the investigative team devote time into its resolution. Vera strikes up a brief and productive friendship with Frank McAffee (David Calder), the harbourmaster, and sparks fly when she talks with Michael Quinn (Alex Ferns), a fisherman who she suspects of smuggling, and Jay and Ellie Connock (Mark Stobbart and Claire Rafferty), who run a fish wholesale business on the docks.

As usual though the real drama takes place in the quiet places. When McAffee takes Vera out on his tender to locate the exact spot the body was found, she gets him to drop her off at a headland where a red van contains evidence of foul play. This remote spot visible from the boat only as a green smudge on the horizon – at least at first – turns out to contain pointers to other clues to the events Vera and her team are investigating. 

I was deeply moved by the scripting of this episode, which goes some way toward addressing the issue of racism, though Vera is as tough on Hicham as she is on Kenny (Jon Morrison) in other episodes of this show. ‘Vera’ thus sets the tone for public debate where people take the time to watch, and in Vera orphans and widows find a tolerant confessor – something like a latter-day village priest with whom the beleaguered soul can enter into a kind of secular communion without the ceremonial trappings of religious devotion to get in the way.