Sally Wainwright’s Yorkshire set creation led by the formidable Sarah Lancashire (playing the equally formidable P.S. Catherine Cawood) first aired way back in 2014. The grim tone that has become ironically synonymous with the title was evident from the first episode after a phenomenal monologue from Lancashire, laying out the context of our protagonist and this small town. 9 years later, the third and final series came to our screens and every Sunday night we tuned in nationwide to see how it all ended…
It would make some sense to break these 6 episodes into two halves. The first being of the quality we’ve come to expect from Wainwright and the Happy Valley team of creators. We catch up with Catherine (the anchor point of the show both in terms of the character and Lancashire’s powerhouse performance) on the brink of retirement. The opening scene tells us everything we need to know about her character through slick dialogue and a cutting delivery. Cue Jake Bugg’s Trouble Town and away we go. Off to a good start. The ensuing couple of episodes maintain a similar standard. We meet a handful of new characters who populate the peripheral storylines and criminal threads in the shape of Mark Stanley’s stomach-turning Mr Hepworth and Amit Shah’s shady Pharmacist Faisal, among others. And of course we see the return of the core cast that occupy the central elements including a much older looking Ryan played by the original actor Rhys Connah. Wainwright insisted on waiting 7 years before shooting this series purely so that Connah could grow up and continue playing the character. Whether or not that was a good call, I’ll let you decide. Suffice to say a more experienced actor could have certainly given the show a lift. Which, once we get onto the latter half of the series, it desperately needs…
Rarely have I seen a show go so spectacularly off a cliff when all signs were pointing the other way. Early indications suggested that this could be Wainwright’s crowning jewel yet some choices around the half-way mark are not only bonkers, but strip the show of all its former credibility and grounded nature. Sure, Happy Valley has always flirted with plausibility and realism, but it’s one of those shows that makes it so easy to suspend disbelief and that’s no simple thing. The mundanity of the locations, the dreary skies, the muted colour-palette, all coalesce to create this world that is the titular “Happy Valley”. And we want to be there with these characters, we want to believe it because even if the events sometimes strain credulity, the world itself feels so very real. But there is a difference between straining credulity and losing all sense of integrity. I’ve seen fantasy shows that feel more realistic. And all of this could be forgiven if these beloved characters found some sense of closure. As it stands, most of the secondary characters get thrown to the wayside and forgotten about in favour of a final ‘confrontation’ that is, quite frankly, painful to watch. Some don’t even get a line in the final episode and believe me there was plenty of room to be found had they trimmed the fat elsewhere.
Ruling – Who’s to say why these things happen? Making a show isn’t easy, not to mention one with this much pressure and expectation. So keeping sight of the many strengths of the show, it’s far from a failure, but the brutal truth is, Happy Valley did not stick the landing and that is a crying shame.