Critic Reviews

The warp and weft of lives, of life, is as expertly woven as ever and you couldn’t wish for a better group of actors to bring it to you. Happy new year.

Magnificent stuff from a writer and actors operating at their peak.

Although Happy Valley is the kind of gripping drama that shouldn’t typically warrant laughter, Sally Wainwright brilliantly manages to weave in comedic lines – yet again – into scenes. ... Lancashire's multi-pronged performance – as a doting grandmother, a sister, a policewoman, a manager, and even a confidante for coercive controlling relationships – never ceases to amaze.

It's a mark of a drama's class that so many years can pass and yet when it picks up it is seamless, as if it has never been away. This is the best misery TV money can buy.

There’s a grandeur to Sally Wainwright’s conception matched by Lancashire’s role-of-a-lifetime performance which puts Happy Valley way up there in the pantheon of British TV drama achievements.

An instant classic, shattering and altogether satisfying. [23 May - 11 Jun 2023, p.6]

It's a profound look at family, morality, and the harshness of life. We've waited seven years for it to arrive, and every single second was worth the wait.

Once again, there’s a clean, pithy script (“God, you’re hard work”), all-round naturalistic performances, strong themes (family, community, humour, grief, betrayal), and the promise of another full-throated, Old Testament-style battle between good and evil, with the whole topped by that watershed lead performance.

Wainwright knows how to do a proper sendoff that speaks to the series’ many recurring themes, pays homage to its troubled locale, and honors its affecting stories. While there’s not much happiness to find in Happy Valley, there’s the right amount of satisfaction in the glimmer of hope that we get a peek of at the end.

Happy Valley is so effective at what it sets out to do, and so neat in fitting all its pieces together (up to the way the story's climax evokes a much milder incident from early in the series), that I'm a bit ambivalent about the fact that a second season has already been ordered. Lancashire is so good that I won't necessarily mind getting to watch more of her in this role, but this particular story is so unique to her in a way that no sequel season can be.