By David Brown
The latest series of Vera, which went out recently on ITV, is now available on DVD, along with a complete box set of all ten series – that’s 40 episodes on 20 discs! And we have five box sets to give away to RT readers, courtesy of ITV Studios. For your chance to win one, see below.
DCI Vera Stanhope and her sergeant, Aiden Healy, may be the perfect detective partnership, but this wasn’t always the case. “I didn’t think I’d got the job,” admits actor Kenny Doughty about the role he’s been playing since 2015. “I’d done a screen test with Brenda [Blethyn] and we’d got along well, but it hadn’t felt like the work I’d hoped to do. When I got home, I spoke to my agent and told her that it hadn’t worked out. And she said, ‘Well, that’s funny because they’ve just offered you the part.’”
DS Healy quickly became a well-established part of the team. But the Barnsley-born Doughty, 44, says that it took him a while to find his feet when he made his debut, back in series five…
“I’d just come off the back of doing The Full Monty in the West End for two years, so I felt rusty where the technical side of TV was concerned. It took me the length of my first series to find who Aiden was and to get my confidence. And I’d been a big fan of the show, so I was also aware of the fantastic work that David Leon had done as the original sidekick, Joe Ashworth. So I wanted to maintain the quality of what had gone before.”
These days, Doughty considers the cast and crew to be “a second family”, and he and Blethyn strive to keep standards high. “We’ve become very close, both on screen and off. There are a lot of laughs in that Land Rover. And, after work, we’ll get together and chill out either at her flat or mine in Newcastle. We’ll make each other dinner and go over what we have to do the following day. Brenda’s on top of all the scripts and she makes sure that everyone is as passionate about the series as she is.”
Speaking of those scripts, does he ever contribute ideas for developing his character?
“No, I like being surprised by what the writers come up with. But I do joke that there should be a Vera special where Aiden is on holiday in the Italian vineyards and she rocks up in the hat and coat in the blazing Mediterranean sun with word of a new murder investigation. That’d be fun!”
To be in with a chance of winning one of our five Vera Complete Box Sets Series 1–10, answer this question below!
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