'Vera' to Conclude After Season 14

Broadcaster ITV confirmed that fan favorite Vera is stepping down from the police force. In a surprise Earth Day announcement, the U.K. broadcaster said the series would conclude with Season 14, which has currently started filming and it expected to continue into the summer of 2024. Rumors had been swirling that Brenda Blethlyn, who plays the series titular sleuth, was looking to retire from the series. With only two episodes slated for Season 14, many fans assumed this was a compromise to keep the show going. However, it looks like that compromise will only be a temporary one to get the show to make it to 2025, after which it will conclude.

ITV had good reason to keep the show on the air for as long as possible. Though Vera was not picked up by PBS for national distribution when it first debuted and only aired on local American public television stations here and there before it was scooped up and put behind Acorn TV's streaming paywall around Season 6 in 2015, the show has been top-rated on both sides of the pond.

Vera Season 13, for example, brought in 4.7 million viewers in the U.K. when it debuted on linear in January 2024, which in the streaming era is a massive number for any broadcast show to be able to garner, especially when it's been on the air for over a decade. In the U.S., the show currently streams new episodes exclusively on BritBox, which treats it like a flagship series. The show also landed its first festive special in December 2023, one of the most-watched programs from the holiday period.