Let’s pray Cath doesn’t cop it

IS she going to live? Well, is she?

All week people have been asking me if Catherine Cawood survives tonight’s Happy Valley finale.

I wish I knew. Sarah Lancashire excels as the retiring Halifax police sergeant who’s as blunt as Clarkson and sharper than a box of ferrets.

On paper, she’s got as much chance as a frog up against a council lawnmower.

Her enemy, odious psycho Tommy Lee Royce, is on her trail after Eurotrash gangsters helped him bolt from custody “like Bradley f***ing Wiggins”.

Royce plans to leg it to Marbella with Ryan, his son by rape – Cawood’s grandson. But only after he’s put granny in her grave.

Sally Wainwright’s script grips like a superglued eco-warrior. Plot-lines overlap, the dialogue is deft, characters are drawn with believable precision. There was even an on-the-ball male detective last Sunday

– a first for this unmissable but man-unfriendly BBC drama.

It’s tense and tragic yet human and relatable, brutal but darkly comic – vinegary wit courses though Cawood’s veins. Loved her Alien Liaison Officer wind-up and her unmasked contempt for PC policing. She calls a spade a spade, turning on her weak sister Clare and her wetter fella Neil for facilitating Ryan’s prison visits to Royce.

Neil is “nothing, he’s nowt”, she sneered. “An empty vessel.” Harsh but fair. Here’s hoping they redeem themselves.

Or Ryan does. He knows all about his evil rapist dad now because Ann Gallagher, one of his victims, spelled out his crimes in horrific detail.

Might mobster Darius Knezevic turn on Royce though? He’s not chuffed about his demented revenge plans. Elsewhere Rob (creepy wifebeating control-freak teacher) is suspected of topping wife Jo.

Let’s hope the real killer, Faisal her chemist/lover, gets nabbed. That Catherine lives.

And that the only journey Royce makes is a one-way trip to Hell.