Sunday Review: Happy Valley (TV serial)

Sarah Lancashire
as Sgt. Catherine Cawood

It isn't that happy

By Morris Dean

Happy Valley (BBC One, 2014, written by Sally Wainwright) is a police drama television series set in a small town in West Yorkshire. "Happy Valley" is what local police call the area because of its drug problem, although the action of the series centers on a kidnapping only indirectly connected to drugs.

    There's a phrase variant used by several characters that seems to be a leitmotif for the show: "if you had / or hadn't done x, this wouldn't have happened."

Steve Pemberton as Kevin Whetherill

    Thus, if accountant Kevin Weatherill's boss had given him the raise he requested so he could afford to send his daughter to a better school, he would not have suggested to local thug Ashley Cowgill that he kidnap the boss's daughter, Ann, for ransom....
    If Lewis Whippey, one of Cowgill's two employees involved in the kidnapping, hadn't mentioned the boss's name within Ann's hearing, the other employee – Tommy Lee Royce, a criminal recently released from prison – wouldn't have concluded that they'd have to kill her....

James Norton as Tommy Lee Royce

    If Sgt. Catherine Cawood – whose daughter had been raped by Royce nine years earlier and killed herself after the child was born – had given the child up for adoption, she and her husband might still be married.
    If Cawood hadn't dogged Royce after his release from prison, she would not have knocked on the door where Ann was being held and unwittingly caused Cowgill to order his men to move her to another location....
    If Cawood had encouraged rather than reprimanded Officer Kirsten McAskill after she screwed up an arrest, McAskill wouldn't have been run over by Royce after not calling for backup when she stopped the van Whippey was driving to transport Ann....
    If Cowgill – who actually is involved in the drug trade and, after his arrest for the kidnapping, agrees to testify against a large drug smuggling ring for a lighter sentence and release under his own cognizanze – had been put into a witness protection program a day earlier, he would not have....[That's maybe more than enough hints already as to the plot.]
    And so it goes.

I agree with Vicky Frost's review in The Guardian ("Have you been watching...Happy Valley?") that Sarah Lancashire's performance as Sgt. Cawood is "astonishing," and that, "between [her & writer Sally Wainwright], they have created something truly unmissable" – that is, not to be missed, although you might very well have missed it but for your good luck that I watched it and happen to be telling you about it.
    According to Wikipedia, a second season was confirmed in August, and filming will start early next year.
    Note: Sarah Lancashire played Caroline in Sally Wainwright's Last Tango in Halifax, which I reviewed on March 2. It too has another season (the third) coming up. According to Wikipedia, it will begin airing on December 28 (in the UK).

Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean