Vera Stanhope returns as police detective with a disheveled exterior, a sharp tongue, and an uncanny ability to solve crimes. Tough, dedicated, and more than a little irreverent, DCI Stanhope is assisted by her long-suffering sergeant, Joe Ashworth.

Based on the award-winning novels by Ann Cleeves, Vera stars two-time Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn (Pride & Prejudice, Secrets & Lies) as a cantankerous but brilliant detective who solves unthinkable crimes in northeast England.

DCI Vera Stanhope and her sergeant, DS Aiden Healey, investigate the deaths of a grandmother found on the desolate Northumberland moors, a young man who worked at a traveling fairground, a fisherman found tangled in the nets of a North Sea trawler, and the mysterious double murder of a moth enthusiast and a 22-year-old victim of a hit-and-run.

This season begins with a bang for Vera and her police colleagues when the charred remains of one of their own, a member of the fraud unit, are found in a slaughterhouse furnace. Later, a teenager's corpse is discovered in a reservoir.

As disheveled and indomitable as ever, DCI Vera Stanhope leads her tightly knit team of Northumberland police through four more daunting cases. No one seems to know anything about the police officer whose body turns up in a slaughterhouse incinerator, the woman killed in a car crash meant to look like an accident, the suburban neighbor found dead in her back garden, and the teenager whose body floats to the surface of a reservoir. How will Vera break the silence to find their killers?

The indomitable Vera and her trusted team unravel more complex cases, exploring stories of corporate corruption, organized crime and deeply buried personal guilt. An entrepreneur's murder delivers no shortage of suspects, and the discovery of a teenager's body floating near a salmon farm reveals a tangled web of deceit between two families. The murder of a cleaner whose death occurred several hours after the killer blow landed sends Vera on an intriguing trail, and it soon becomes clear that not all is as it seems when a wealthy betting shop tycoon is killed during a home invasion.