The British drama Vera starring Brenda Blethyn ran for 14 seasons and I watched every episode from beginning to end in the last five days of my BritBox holiday subscription. Binge-watching has its drawbacks and it’s with what you notice because you’re seeing it quickly in succession. Here’s what I found:
Backstory. You’ve heard me say that I don’t like it when the main character has so much back story that it takes episode after episode to unpack it. It’s a bit easier when you’re bingeing because the episodes come one after the other; it’s not as drawn-out but still. You never really do figure out her clearly dysfunctional childhood story.
Team Development. She says repeatedly that her family are her colleagues but those colleagues must get whiplash as she alternates between thanking them for good work and then excoriating them for not getting the job done. She can be really mean. And if anyone barks back, she goes deadly quiet and puts them “in their place”. In 14 seasons Vera rejects almost all overtures by these colleagues, from not wanting to be a godmother to never going out for drinks with the team. Once she had dinner with her sergeant’s family – just once. She doesn’t seem to know anything about her team and their lives outside the office despite years of working together.
Repeat dialog. What are we missing? We’re missing something. Something is missing. This dialog usually happens about ¾ the way through each episode. Every episode. I suppose if you weren’t binge watching, you might not notice this.
Lying. Every single person who is interviewed by Vera and her team lies. All of them. Not just the murderer, not just the shady person who has motive but isn’t the killer, not just the neighbor down the street who heard the shots… all of them. Usually by the end, they have all recanted their lies. It makes you wonder if there is something in the water in the UK.
Perry Mason theory of killer identification. Decades ago, my dad and I came up with this theory — any character who is on screen or has dialog more than three times, but doesn’t really have any strong tie to the story usually turns out to be the murderer. And you can’t usually figure out the motive ahead of time. My dad and I would shout out who we thought it was and IF you could come up with any sort of close motive, you got extra credit for that. Anyway, that leads to my Vera theory of killer identification. There is almost always one main motive path: corrupt financial business, past returning to bite you in the butt, blackmail… all the regulars. But you can throw most of these out; all the time spent tracking all this down is wasted because the murderer is almost always someone very close to the victim, not connected to that motive and it’s almost never pre-meditated. The son, the daughter, the mother, the father, the wife, the husband, even the best friend. And just like those Perry Mason shows, you won’t always get the motive until the very end. Vera has a very annoying habit of looking at something given to her by her team (usually a piece of paper or something on a pad) and charging off without letting us, the audience, know what has just been discovered.
Anyway, I’m making it sound like I didn’t like the series or the characters. I actually did. In fact, in the second to the last episode, one of her team (Kenny) got clobbered and I thought for sure he was done for and I got really upset. SPOILER ALERT… Kenny survives the attack but we don’t know that until the next episode. The jury is still out whether I would have enjoyed it more or less if I had been watching it weekly for years rather than watching 14 seasons in five days! Guess we’ll never know.
Any series you’ve been enjoying lately? Bingeing or not?
Trail Baboon 
Criminal Minds for the first two seasons. Not gonna do a third. Too much gore.
The Blacklist. See above.
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We rarely watch more than one or two episodes of anything per night, so I don’t think I would term it binge watching but we have made it through all the Vera episodes at least once.
As I recall, Vera has only four episodes per season but the episodes are longish— 90 minutes or so. That’s a lot of television in 5 days.
We are all caught up on episodes of Brokenwood, Madame Blanc, Astrid, My Life is Murder, Death in Paradise (which we’ve been through twice), and numerous other series with fewer seasons. Robin has also binged other series that don’t interest me while she is in her studio doing handwork.
Considering how many books you get through in a year, Sherrilee, it’s hard to imagine if you are also binging that much television how you find time for anything else.
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Do I gather you are letting your Britbox subscription expire?
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Yes, the BritBox is gone now. I just couldn’t justify spending more money than we already spend on television so when the gift subscription from my friend ended, I canceled it.And I will admit that the BritBox bingeing did take a bite out of my reading for February and March (and the first week of April). I really did feel that since it was a gift and I only had it for two months that I should really “use it up” as it were. The reason that I watched so much Vera was that it was the last five days of the subscription!
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I watch less and less TV dramas–and comedies for that matter. Too many choices, too complicated to even turn on the TV, pull up the streaming service, and find what you want to watch. Whatever happened to punching in the channel number and being done with it?? I click so much some days I feel like I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome in my thumb. 😦
The only series(es) I’ve bothered with lately are “Reacher” and “The Lincoln Lawyer.” We watched Bosch for about eight seasons until his daughter and that DA or police commissioner or whatever she was (the black woman who became a featured player near the end of the Harry Bosch run).
My wife watches MANY series but rarely binges. She’s mostly a one or two shows per day or every few days viewer.
Chris in Owatonna (apparently I’ve become another Anonymous thanks to WP. Wish I knew what I did or didn’t do to get “ignored.”)
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At one point, I was “bingeing” the old series Dark Shadows, because they had it on disk at the library, and I vaguely remembered it from my childhood mumps days home from school.
The library’s collection was a bit spotty and it was a bit of an adventure tracking it down and waiting until a set came in. Then they got the pre-Barnabas episodes- what treasure!
Now I can just stream it on Pluto – where’s the adventure in that?
Anyway, it was fun to hear the interviews with each set. Lots of TV history being made in those days. Everything was “live” with almost no re-takes. It’s wild to see how somebody would go up, and they’d have to untangle themselves as best they could.
Also fun to find out what that plots really were. I cannot imagine why my mother let me watch that those days. I suspect having a newborn and toddler who had a far more severe case of mumps in the house at the time had a lot to do with it.
I remember her saying years later (s&h was around so we’re talking many years) she doesn’t know why she didn’t just walk out. I was shocked to hear her say that, but not surprised she thought it.
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Dark Shadows was on at 3:00 pm when I was in college, and those of us done with classes gathered in the lounge to watch it whenever possible… Fun memory, thanks.
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i also remember it as being on at 3PM. Maybe channel 11. I didn’t always get home from school in time to catch it. I think I mostly saw it in the summer months.
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I remember 3 p.m., but I vaguely remember channel 9. My memory is poor though.
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
We are coming upon the season when I watch very little TV because I am outside or in the garden. In the winter I do watch, however, I rarely watch more that 1 or 2 hours per evening. I do not watch TV during the day unless I am sick. Last week I talked about “The Pitt” which is riveting. They drop one show per week. This week or next week should be the end of this season. Lately I have been watching “The West Wing” on Netflix (1998-2006) and I pretend that our governance is still really like that now. I watch it before bed so I can sleep at night. I also watch “The Lincoln Lawyer” but I find those story lines stretch believability. And then there is HGTV which is really House and Decor Porn but that also is winter fare. That takes only half an attention span, as well.
THe last time I actually binge watched stuff was during COVID when there was nothing else to do. At that time I binged on “The British Baking Show” and “Nashville.”
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PS, re: Lincoln Lawyer. Lorna Crane marries CIsco! Really? That guy drives me nuts. I cannot suspend my disbelief that thoroughly.
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I personally am not interested in dramas that feel like they are “ripped from today’s headlines”. A few years ago we binged our way through Midnight Diner. Entirely stress free.
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It’s not really bingable but I have been watching Tales Of Tomorrow a science fiction TV show from 1951-1953. Only a half hour long and filmed on one or two sets.
Many of the stories are quite lame with plot holes through which one could drive a truck. The advertisements are from Kriesler jewelry and Masland carpet. I swear a company I worked for, Dakota Flooring out of Mandan, ND, had rolls of Masland in the warehouse. Dried out, stiff as a board, impossible to work with. The boss was a flooring hoarder.
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The closest we come to binge watching is to do the same series two nights in a row, although once in a blue moon we’ll watch two episodes back to back if there’s a “cliff-hanger” involved.
We’re currently watching most recent seasons of Virgin River,( just pure soap opera) and Resident Alien (I laugh out loud at least once each episode, but the plot is getting a little wonky).
We tried Izzoli and Isles, but more violence that I like. Sounds like maybe we should try Lincoln Lawyer.
Anyone tried a Netflix one called TURN, spy caper during the Revolutionary War…?
Is Veronica Mars worth watching? (I know, it’s really old…)
House of Guinness, or The Forsyth Saga?
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We don’t watch much TV and almost never binge. The only recent exception was when we watched 3 or 4 episodes of season two of Andor in one sitting. It was really excellent. We also enjoyed Bookish on PBS, but didn’t binge watch.
Years ago we used to binge-watch Doctor Who on DVD, before it was available in the U.S. Now that it’s readily accessible, we haven’t watched it. Go figure.
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I’d already forgotten about Bookish. That was great!
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Agree!!
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Agree!
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I can’t say I’ve ever binged anything. Lately I’ve been watching All Creatures Great and Small. I might like to go back and rewatch the original series with Christopher Timothy as James. In the new series, Samuel West is really terrific as Siegfried. I also like Anna Madeley as Mrs. Hall.
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i discovered the pitt and love itive been waling up to leavit it to beaver for years
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Very late to the discussion, so no one will see this. I’ve been watching The West Wing on Netflix. I think there were 7 or 8 seasons. I’m in season 5 now.
I don’t binge. I usually watch for 2-3 hours at night. I rarely to never watch during the day, unless something has happened and I need information. I’m not sure if the information on CBS news is accurate anymore.
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I enjoy Vera, but I also agree with all your points. It makes me upset when she is so mean to her staff. She’s a little more tender towards her sergeant, but not much.
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