'Vera' Confirmed to Return for Season 14 on ITV & BritBox

Mystery series Vera will be back for a fourteenth season, ITV confirmed the morning after Season 13 concluded in the U.K. The quick turnaround nature of the announcement was a deliberate move by the network to calm an online storm set off earlier in January 2024 when The Sun ran a statement from star Brenda Blethyn that the tabloid rag claimed was a suggestion the series would not return. However, as per usual, gossip from that corner was merely a lot of noise looking for clicks without a grain of truth to it. The series will return, as it has for almost a decade and a half now, with more feature-length cases for DCI Vera Stanhope to puzzle out.

The quote the tabloid toyed with was actually a vaguely anodyne nothing-burger quote about how Blethyn didn't know anything either way about a renewal. However, it blew up partly because the series isn't like Grantchester or Unforgotten. It's a mystery series titled after its detective; it cannot be reconfigured into an ensemble if the lead decides to retire. Without Brenda Blethyn as Vera, there is no series. Not that Blethyn is retiring, and she's not the only one who has steadily appeared in all thirteen seasons and counting, either. (Jon Morrison and Riley Jones have been sidekicking as DC Kenny Lockhart and DC Mark Edwards since the first season.) But it's still an easy fear to prey on.

All that being said, it is notable that Season 14 will only consist of two feature-length episodes instead of three. Vera never ran more than four installments for the first ten seasons, anyway; Season 11 ran six, but that was due to filming being interrupted by lockdowns. (It was two unfinished seasons that wound up running as one.) In 2023, Season 12 ran four episodes and a Christmas special, bringing the total to five. Season 13's reduced three-episode run was assumed to be because the series expected another holiday installment and accounted for it ahead of time.

However, even with a holiday special for Season 14, only two episodes would be the show's first real reduction in installments. Whether or not that's due to Blethyn's schedule is beside the point; what matters is that Vera will continue and that fans can look forward to more of DCI Stanhope solving mysteries, most likely with David Leon's DI Joe Ashworth as her partner once more. As the series has not aired on this side of the pond, we will not spoil how Ashworth's return goes, but suffice it to say that after nearly a decade away, he and Vera discover a lot that's changed about the person they used to work with.

Currently, everyone from the current team is expected to return for Season 14, including Blethyn, Leon, Morrison, and Jones, plus Sarah Kameela as Dr. Paula Bennett, who joined the team in Season 12, and Rhiannon Clements (MaryLand) as DC Stephanie Duncan, Season 13's other significant addition. Details about who is penning and directing the episodes remain under wraps for now, but ITV did say the episodes were set to film in the spring, so details about that, plus guest stars, are expected in due course.

Vera Seasons 1-12 are streaming on BritBox in the U.S.; Season 13 is expected to debut in the first half of 2024. Season 14 does not have a release date, but chances are ITV will probably hold the premiere until early 2025.