Happy Valley

It's a profound look at family, morality, and the harshness of life. We've waited seven years for it to arrive, and every single second was worth the wait.

An instant classic, shattering and altogether satisfying. [23 May - 11 Jun 2023, p.6]

There’s a grandeur to Sally Wainwright’s conception matched by Lancashire’s role-of-a-lifetime performance which puts Happy Valley way up there in the pantheon of British TV drama achievements.

Although Happy Valley is the kind of gripping drama that shouldn’t typically warrant laughter, Sally Wainwright brilliantly manages to weave in comedic lines – yet again – into scenes. ... Lancashire's multi-pronged performance – as a doting grandmother, a sister, a policewoman, a manager, and even a confidante for coercive controlling relationships – never ceases to amaze.

It's a mark of a drama's class that so many years can pass and yet when it picks up it is seamless, as if it has never been away. This is the best misery TV money can buy.

The warp and weft of lives, of life, is as expertly woven as ever and you couldn’t wish for a better group of actors to bring it to you. Happy new year.

Magnificent stuff from a writer and actors operating at their peak.

Wainwright knows how to do a proper sendoff that speaks to the series’ many recurring themes, pays homage to its troubled locale, and honors its affecting stories. While there’s not much happiness to find in Happy Valley, there’s the right amount of satisfaction in the glimmer of hope that we get a peek of at the end.

The plotting overall is a bit shaggier, and I had to pay frequent visits to my friend Google to remind myself of events and relationships from seasons past. (Say, that investigative reporter Richard, played by Derek Riddell, is Catherine’s ex-husband and Ryan’s grandfather.) But the work by Lancashire and Norton brings everything into focus despite the long gap. And the final scene they share, along with its immediate aftermath, is everything you would want it to be.

The new season is a step below the first two in its narrative momentum, but Lancashire and Norton are so good and the resolution between their characters is so satisfying that nothing else really matters.

In order to set up a satisfyingly visceral conclusion, Wainwright forces the action and pushes at plausibility a little harder than those viewers will be used to. The story’s focus also is diluted by her indulgence of characters from the first two seasons who are brought back but not given much to do. Those offenses are minor, though. And the mechanics of the plot fade in the face of the prodigious performances by Lancashire and Norton.

Wainwright strikes a delicate balance between intimate character study and increasingly complex crime drama. Plot layers give Happy Valley more scope and suspense, while remaining digestible.

This final spin over the moors is a worthy way to round out one of British television’s greatest sagas.