There is a partial footprint in the sand and a – surprisingly dry – letter with an address on it in the dead man’s pocket. Then the narrative hook arrives, as Matthew receives a call from his partner DC Jen Rafferty (Pearl Mackie) informing him that a body with a single stab wound has been found on the beach and asking him to get down there pronto. And beneath that, a sign of relief from the commissioning editors. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of a thousand Vera fans shaking their heads at their dozing spouses and making a key emotional investment in how things are going to turn out. This – an affair obviously being conducted by a evangelical sect according to their own rules (and led by preacher Dennis Stephenson, played by Martin Shaw) – he observes from a distance, before being chased off by his estranged mother, Dorothy (Juliet Stevenson). Our hero is DI Matthew Venn, played by Ben Aldridge, who we meet being sent off by his husband to attend his father’s funeral.

On this initial outing (taken from the first of Cleeves’s Two River series), the signs are at least promising.

Doubtless all are hoping it will give rise to another long-running popular series whose lead character, like Brenda Blethyn’s DCI Vera Stanhope and Douglas Henshall’s DCI Jimmy Perez, can keep pulling in the punters even after the source material is exhausted. F irst Vera, then Shetland – now Ann Cleeves’s crime novel The Long Call has been adapted for television on ITV.

Ann cleeves the long call