Happy Valley’s captivating finale was TV masterpiece

BBC1

It’s pretty safe to say Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright stuck the landing during this week’s incredible series finale.

The most heartening thing about the conclusion to this for-thehistory-books crime drama was that it didn’t rely on shock deaths or big last-minute twists.

Instead, the climax we got was just the two people we care about most, Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) and her arch nemesis Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), in a kitchen, finally saying the things to each other they’ve wanted to say since episode one. At almost every point Wainwright sidestepped the audience’s expectations about what we might see or how things would play out.

In the previous episode we saw Tommy communicating with his estranged son Ryan (Rhys Connah) via a games console, certainly setting up that there might be a final battle for the boy’s love between Catherine and Tommy.

But that was off the table within minutes of this episode starting when Ryan told police about these conversations. Less dramatic, maybe, but far more realistic and told us everything about where Ryan was as a character.

In another bold move that shows how confident a writer Wainwright is, she also hobbled Tommy for the final showdown.

After being stabbed in a brutal knife fight with local mobsters, Tommy was a dead man walking so that meant when Catherine arrived home to find him in her kitchen, the threat he had posed was basically gone.

What followed in the nearly 15-minute scene was a masterclass in writing and acting. The blows may only have been verbal but it was a far more satisfying way for these old enemies to finish it.

The fact Wainwright could draw out flickers of sympathy for Tommy in that finale shows how remarkable she is as a writer. She has made a career out of creating amazing television, but Happy Valley might well be her masterpiece.

Sarah Lancashire as Sgt Catherine Cawood.