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Does Anybody Do Quiet Tragedy like 'Happy Valley'?

By Alison Lanier | TV | May 26, 2023 |

By Alison Lanier | TV | May 26, 2023 |


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No. No they don’t.

Happy Valley tackles the most difficult piece of tragedy to portray: the lives that are lived, day to day, in the long, long aftermath.

Writer and creator Sally Wainwright, of Gentleman Jack fame, made an unexpected return with season three of Happy Valley, a procedural police drama set in the stratified, drug-riddled community of Yorkshire. And as usual, Happy Valley is very, very good. Wainwright has a particular way of working with the subtleties of character, especially her older female protagonists, that mixes rich intellect with heart and very human and destructive faults. And while I loved Gentleman Jack, Happy Valley holds a special place in my heart.

In the first two seasons, which aired in 2014 and 2016 respectively, we followed Catherine Cawood, a 47-year-old Yorkshire police officer who lives with her sister Clare (Siobhan Finneran, in an extraordinarily good piece of sibling casting), a recovering addict, and her grandson Ryan (Rhys Connah). Ryan is the son of Catherine’s daughter, who died by suicide after giving birth. Catherine’s is a life of unspoken and invisible scars, and Lancashire carries her character with an understated precise performance.

Catherine knows exactly what’s happening on her patch; she knows the people, their troubles, their gossip, and their foibles, and she approaches it all with a no-nonsense directness. But more than that, she’s both extremely funny and capable, as well as extremely smart. She’s the beating heart of the show, the nucleus around which loose atoms of plot and character eventually coalesce.

From the Fargo-ish plot of the first season, Happy Valley approaches the small, rough lives of scattered people drawn together by coincidence, circumstance, and pain. And season three is no exception.

After a real-time eight-year jump forward between seasons two and three, Catherine is nearing retirement. She has plans, a tentative but affectionate romantic partner, and a few “easier” years behind her after the events of season two. She’s even stopped keeping track of Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), the chilling boogeyman of the series—an intelligent, brutal, and pitiless monster whose violence weaves inexorably through the show’s twisting conspiracies of crime and violence.

But what makes this show so exceptional is, yes, the extremely good acting all around on the part of the tight-core cast, but also its close-to-the-chest sensibility. Nothing is grand, nothing is easy. Every moment of heroism comes with a toll, and that toll isn’t as simple as it’s made out to be. At one point in season one, without spoiling anything, Catherine becomes viciously depressed—and it is vicious. It’s anger and cruelty and hopelessness and despair, and it’s portrayed so well it hurt to watch as someone who’s struggled with severe depression for most of my life.

This is the kind of story that’s titanically hard to tell: the complicated kind of pain that comes with loss and helplessness in the face of that loss. Catherine is an authority figure who confuses, surprises, and alienates us, and the show stays on its feet by making her so fantastically human in the process. So much goes unsaid. It’s the kind of show where you could half-watch in the background and follow a tense and intriguing plot—but you’d be missing the heart of the show, its tics and hesitations, its real unspoken tenacity.
Happy Valley isn’t an easy watch, but it’s well worth it.

Lucky viewers in the UK can watch the whole of season three now; less lucky viewers in the US can watch the first episode on Acorn (and then hold their breath).