User Reviews

If anything, I found the second series of "Happy Valley" to be even better than the much-lauded first. Over six one-hour episodes, we're taken back to the inappropriately named Yorkshire town where as ever there's lots going on and none of it good. Firstly there's a spate of murders of women in the town, including the mother of last series's nemesis of Sarah Lancashire's Catherine Cawood character, the now imprisoned Tommy Lee Royce. Secondly, a senior CID detective finds himself the latest victim of a female blackmailer with whom he's tried to end an affair, but who in a rage kills her and then tries to make it look like it's been by the other killer. Thirdly, Royce, from within the prison, starts to groom an impressionable, docile woman into fulfilling his wish to get to know his six year old son, now living in granny Cawood's house, along with her recently separated son and recovering alcoholic sister.

These three strands are skilfully woven together into an admittedly far-fetched overarching narrative which manages to work due to the intricate plotting, depth of characterisation and fine acting by almost all of the cast. Lancashire dominates again, rarely off the screen, a well-meaning middle-aged surrogate mother-figure to all and sundry, with a big heart always trying to do good by everyone. The only person she can't and won't forgive is Royce, festering away in prison but determined to get back at her via his easily-led (as we discover) mini-harem of willing disciples.

The dialogue is sharp and credible throughout, the situations mostly realistic and convincing, the only weakness for me being the inveighing of the young boy back to him by his dad.

There are very occasionally moments of black humour, none more so at the end as our heroine disastrously tries her hand at suicide counselling but elsewhere her instinct to unearth and solve crime seems almost Holmes-like as trouble invariably finds her wherever she goes.

One of those rare series where you keenly anticipate the next episode and it doesn't disappoint.

I've watched both seasons and I enjoyed the series and don't regret watching them. But the feminist agenda, mentioned by some others posting here, is glaring enough at times to detract seriously from the story lines. For the most part Happy Valley presents female characters as almost invariably competent, virtuous (from a feminist perspective, of course) and smart while the males are all incompetent, criminal or malicious. Yes, there are exceptions. But even the "bad" females seem to have justifications, such as Royce's sucker fiancé who is a "victim" of his seductive good looks. Can anyone identify ONE admirable male in the 12 episodes?

Great example: Catherine and a male cop are chasing the murderer toward the train tracks. Now I'm sure Catherine is in semi-decent shape from chasing bad guys all the time but she is still a chunky middle-aged woman yet she's gaining on the bad guy, who appears to be slim and in very good shape. Even worse, the cop who's with her, who is much younger and in better shape than Catherine, not only doesn't he appear to be able to catch up, he even falls splat on his face!

Catherine finally catches up to the murderer on a road overpass and he climbs onto the wall ostensibly intending to kill himself. It's not all that high, as Catherine warns him, and he's likely just to break his legs. But after some back-n-forth which fails to convince him, he falls backwards, lands onto a passing car and presumably manages to kill himself despite the relatively short distance. This is all observed by a pack of cops who are down below watching the action above them.

Now in all that time do you think these cops might think to CLOSE THE ROAD to save a passing motorist from perhaps also being KILLED by the falling suicide? No, but they were too busy watching Catherine fail to convince him not to jump. Indeed, this appears to be one of the rare times that Catherine fails at anything, being the supremely competent female star of this series, although it isn't really much of a failure since the suicide was a nasty man who had murdered a woman with which he was having an affair and to whom he refused to pay 1000 pounds a month in extortion for breaking off the affair.

Nonetheless, an enjoyable watch if you can get past the feminist agenda and the occasional examples of poor scripting.