Vera Series 5 - Muddy Waters - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode, Old Wounds.

My review of the first season of Vera.
My review of the second season of Vera.
My review of the third season of Vera.
My reviews of the fourth season of Vera.

And it's back to the country - now Vera and Aiden investigate a death on a farm. We have a chilling body discovery in a slurry pit - the workers are trying to remove a blockage when up he bobs from the black goo. Whoever he was, his body was weighted down, which means this was no accident (or else a very creative suicide).

The farmer, Danny Pryor, and the foreman, Milosh Beqiri, decided to dismiss the two foreign workers who were with him when they discovered the body, as a favor. This decision quickly backfires, for by the time Vera and Aiden track down the men's homes, one, Zamir, is hovering on the edge of death from a gunshot wound to the neck and the other, Goran, on the run. A mistake on Aiden's part means Goran - suspect number one - gets off scot free.

At last, they discover the dead man's identity - he's Jack Reeves, the son of travelers. His parents are shocked at the news - and there's another little storyline: the mother blames his father for driving the boy away. According to them, he'd been involved with drugs, but had cleaned up recently. He was helped on that score by the local priest who describes Jack as a charitable and kind person.

Speaking of travelers, there's a bad history between the travelers and the Pryor family. At some point, Danny displaced some travelers from a field he wished to cultivate. But does the conflict run deeper?

It turns out that Jack was living in a camper close to the farm. Vera and Aiden track it down and discover that the Pryors' homeschooled deaf son, Toby, had been visiting him there. Thickened, the plot has.

Vera is more like herself here. She's short with Aiden and Kenny, and presses suspects, forcing her company on Jack's ex-girlfriend by cornering her at a bus stop and pestering her about Jack's tattoo. Yes, this is the Vera we know and love.

A fairly solid episode, it's marred by a weirdly un-foreshadowed ending. The motive is ridiculously unconvincing, and the ploy feels more like an attempt to surprise the audience than a reasonable solution to the story so far.

(I never did get around to writing about the last episode of Series 5. Here's a link to my Series 6 reviews.)

Longish