Boxing Clever: Happy Valley
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s choice is so good it’s more of a prescription than a recommendation
When the first series of Happy Valley aired in 2014 it was an instant hit for the BBC, backed by fantastic reviews and even better word of mouth. It is a show that has everything; heart, humour, drama and possibly the most powerful performance by a British lead actor.
Sarah Lancashire may still have been best known for playing Coronation Street’s Raquel before Happy Valley – but her portrayal of world-weary Sgt Catherine Cawood changed that overnight.
Cawood was written specifically for Lancashire by the excellent Sally Wainwright, after being hugely impressed with her on Last Tango in Halifax. Strong yet vulnerable, and stubborn as granite, she is a tour de force that treats criminals and constabulary middle management with equally short shrift.
In the first series a tragic family history and a kidnap plot steer Catherine into a head on collision with Tommy Lee Royce, a recently released convict with a talent for mayhem and misery.
James Norton is perfectly cast as Royce in a screen-grabbing breakthrough role, and provides a fitting nemesis for the dogged matriarch and police officer. Their bitter feud sustains for all three seasons of Happy Valley and provides a powerful overall narrative ark for the show.
The entire cast are excellent, with special mention going to Siobhan Finneran as Catherine’s long suffering sister Clare Cartwright, and Rhys Connah who plays Ryan, the grandson Cawood raises after the earlier suicide of her daughter.
Indeed, the almost intolerable delay between season two (2016) and season three (2023) was because Wainwright insisted that Connah was to play Ryan in the story’s finale, on the cusp of adulthood and faced with a terrible decision to make.
It was well worth the wait, but those of us that watched Happy Valley as it was made will probably always envy those that have picked it up more recently and can rattle through the 18 perfect episodes on the iPlayer without any delay or interruption.
All three series of Happy Valley are available to view on BBC iPlayer.