Can "weren't" be used in reference to a singular noun?

I've been watching a TV sitcom lately, "Last Tango in Halifax." A main character uses "weren't" instead of "wasn't" and I am wondering if that is considered correct in some areas or dialects? For example, "It weren't like that," or "I weren't going to stop there today." (As an American, British terminology sometimes sounds odd to me; especially the slang - which I usually find spot-on, witty and/or damn funny.)

This show isn't like a "Beverly Hillbillies" type; the characters aren't uneducated bumpkins. So my question is whether or not weren't can sometimes be interchangeable with wasn't, and if so, when? And is it a regional thing?

Solution 1:

I've certainly read weren't's southern equivalent, "warn't," used before. For example, from Huckleberry Finn: "Jim warn’t on his island, so I tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country."

Solution 2:

You get this in the West Country dialects as well (I were/I weren't), in the indicative. Not standard English, but certainly a recognised feature of dialects in that part of the country.

Solution 3:

@alsa provides the contrafactual use of the subjunctive "were." There are also the optative use, "Would that it were true," and the future-less-vivid use, "Were she to do this, what would be her reward?"

Solution 4:

“It weren’t like that” or “I weren’t going to stop there today” — in New Zealand that is just plain wrong, but it is probably a valid local usage somewhere in the UK.

It is correct to use “If I weren’t” (for example, feeling so ill) if we follow it with “I would (verb)” where there is a condition affecting the outcome, or lack of it.

It is a relic of the subjunctive mood, I imagine.