In her scathing series one finale speech about the knock-on effects of the valley being flooded with drugs by the top level of the dealing food-chain, Catherine told the Gallaghers, “It never stops. It just never stops”. You can understand her fatalism after this week’s episode. Too right it never stops. It gets worse and worse. And yet it doesn’t. Not because fictional suffering is supposed to make us feel relatively better about our own problems (does it ever? In grief, all I want to hear coming out of my TV is light, bright laughter), but because of something else that never stops: Catherine Cawood. Her tenacity against life’s unrelenting flow of shit is redemptive. Of course she went after an off-the-wagon, belligerent Clare at the end of this episode. That’s what Catherine does. She looks after her sister, rescues enslaved women, lectures idiot teens, Tasers baseball bat-wielding human traffickers in the balls, and sleeps in the conservatory with a cricket bat in case the Halifax Mafia comes calling for her neighbour. She’s someone we all want on our side, which is what keeps millions of us tuning in. Even if the police can’t, we can clear one name from the list, Catherine’s. I’ll make myself clear here. Anyone who thinks Cawood’s a viable suspect should leave now and close the door behind them. I won’t have a word said against her under my roof. Introducing a whodunit mystery is a new one on Happy Valley, which garnered tension in series one using the gap between our knowledge and that of the police. Back then, we knew who the criminals were and what they’d done; the suspense came from watching Catherine piece it all together. This time around, we’re all in the same boat and playing the same guessing game. Happy Valley’s writing remains its trump card. Its plots might be tabloid fodder, but Wainwright manages to tease comedy, truth and realism from even the most sensational. The opening kitchen scene this week, which saw Clare drop her voice to pronounce the word “alcoholic” in the company of a recently escaped slave-worker who can’t understand a word they’re saying, and Daniel apologise to the same for saying “shite”, is proof of that. Amidst the misery, Happy Valley is true, funny and unimprovably English. Read Louisa’s review of the previous episode, here.
