Happy Valley

Sally Wainwright's Happy Valley launched on BBC One in April 2014 and won three BAFTAs across its three seasons (2014, 2016, 2023) including Best Drama Series and Best Actress (Sarah Lancashire) twice. The series consolidated Wainwright, alongside Jed Mercurio, as one of the most consistently distinguished British prestige-television writers of the 2010s, and Lancashire's central performance is widely cited as one of the great recent leading-actress turns in any television culture.

Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Lancashire) is a Calderdale Valley West Yorkshire Police uniformed officer in her late forties, divorced, raising her grandson alone after her daughter's death, broadly respected in the community she has policed for decades. In the opening episodes of the first series she crosses paths with Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), the man she holds responsible for her daughter's death and now released from prison. Siobhan Finneran plays Catherine's recovering-alcoholic sister Clare; the supporting Halifax-area community is anchored by a long-rotation ensemble.

Wainwright's writing (sharp, regional, distinctly unsentimental about female interiority and police work) produced a series whose third season finale, in 2023, drew over six million UK viewers and was widely covered as one of the most carefully landed long-form drama conclusions in recent British television. Lancashire's central performance, sustained across nine years between first and third series, is one for the long memory.