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Happy Valley (2014)

2014 · Crime,Drama,Thriller · crime-procedural, uk-kitchen-sink, crime-psychological-profiler

Happy Valley poster

Happy Valley is a Yorkshire-set British crime drama that uses a kidnapping-gone-wrong plot as the scaffolding for a deeply human study of a damaged but indomitable police sergeant, Catherine Cawood. Anchored by what reviewers call one of the greatest television performances ever committed to screen — Sarah Lancashire's portrayal of Cawood — the show operates in a register of unglamorous authenticity: bleak landscapes, ordinary speech, psychologically credible villains, and raw family dysfunction. It is dark, slow-building, and unrelenting in its emotional demands, but consistently rewarded by viewers as essential British drama. The criminal threat is real and menacing, the procedural elements are credible, and the personal stakes are never subordinated to plot mechanics.

From the reviewers

The portrayal is SO real in every aspect. It's real in every mannerism, in the shift between her persona as a private person and police officer, in the way she dresses, the way she wears her hair, her make up, the choices she makes and how she behaves.
So extremely vulnerable, yet so extremely strong and when push comes to shove so extremely brave and tough.
The plot squeezes the characters so hard that it's sometimes unwatchable because you relate so intensely to the psychological pressures their under, both the good guys and the bad.
The lead sergeant Catherine Cawood and her sister are so ordinary, preoccupied with ordinary things, (no trendy,smarmy,clever middle class media interpretations of what ordinary people speak like dialog). Without exception every character is believable.
The setting is the bleakest place I've ever seen, a beautiful English valley shrouded in mist, dampness and high rises. The streets and buildings are claustrophobic.

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