SALLY WAINWRIGHT'S multi-Bafta award winning hit Happy Valley returns to the BBC for its third and final series in the new year, starring Sarah Lancashire as Sergeant Catherine Cawood.
When Catherine discovers the remains of a gangland murder victim in a drained reservoir, it sparks a chain of events that leads her straight back to Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton).
Her grandson, Ryan (Rhys Connah), is now sixteen and has ideas of his own about the kind of relationship he wants to have with the man Catherine refuses to acknowledge as his father, leaving Catherine’s sister Clare (Siobhan Finneran) caught in the middle.
In another part of the valley, a local pharmacist gets in over his head when a neighbour is arrested.
Speaking ahead of the return of the show, creator Sally Wainwright praise Sarah Lancashire's performance.
"I think she is an extraordinarily empathetic performer," she said. "I think she converts the real subtleties of the tiny, tiny moment-by-moment thoughts I everything she does. The audience really engage with her."
Wainwright also spoke about he inspiration behind the show.
"I saw a documentary by Jez Lewis called Shed Your Tears and Walk Away and it was about drug and alcohol problems, specifically in Hebden Bridge," she explained.
"The other influence was that, when I was a kid, there was a series called Juliet Bravo, which I really, really liked. It was actually not filmed far from Hebden Bridge, it was filmed in Todmorden. It was about a female police inspector and it was a really good show. It’s kind of in my top ten TV shows from adolescence, so it was my attempt to re-visit that.
"The other big thing that inspired me of course, which I’ve talked about a lot, was Nurse Jackie. I wanted to write my own Nurse Jackie, but obviously I couldn’t write about a nurse, so I wrote about a policewoman instead. When I wrote the first series that was very much in my head as an influence."
The six-year gap between season two and three was to allow the character of Ryan to get to a point where he is old enough to make his own choices about his relationship with his father.
"I really wanted to be able to explore that. It’s been great that we got Rhys back to play Ryan which has been fantastic, and he has done a really lovely job in that. That was always the intention, to have a gap and it has worked out just about right.
"Just the right period of time because he is now 16, so he can travel places by himself, he can make choices. He can do things behind Catherine’s back. The intention developed through conversations I had with Sarah to make it a three-parter, to make a trilogy. We always said this would be the final season and it is very definitely is the final season."
Happy Valley series three (6x60’) is a Lookout Point production for the BBC. Executive producers are Sally Wainwright and Sarah Lancashire, with Faith Penhale and Will Johnston for Lookout Point, Ben Irving and Rebecca Ferguson for the BBC.
Happy Valley will return to BBC One on New Year's Day at 9pm.
