For several days, the question on the lips of social media, and hanging in the air of workplace kitchenettes, has been: how will Happy Valley end? Will Ryan be forced to choose between his dad and his granny, like a Labrador torn between a handful of salami and a fistful of mini cheddars? Will Catherine finally send Tommy off to meet his maker? Or would her planned retirement trip to the Himalayas fail to make it over the Pennines? In the end, the finale unfolded in true Happy Valley fashion: a touch of bathos, a splash of bleak humour, and a great slug of relief. “TLR dead,” comes the simple, understated, text message, which lowers the curtain on a great British saga.
In the seven years that Happy Valley was off-air, between its second outing in 2016 and this latest series, it developed an almost mystical quality – at least in my household. I’d sit through hours of brash yet banal police procedurals, tutting internally when the show failed to inject a vein of black humour into the violent climax, or characters didn’t immediately offer guests a cup of tea. I watched season after season of Line of Duty, desperately hoping that someone would evidence even the vaguest sign of an emotional inner life. But it was in vain: Happy Valley sat there for years as a beautiful blip.
