Everything to Remember From 'Happy Valley's Second Season
Season 2 of the celebrated Yorkshire police drama Happy Valley starts as it means to go on: with Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) absolutely worn out. Over a cuppa with her sister Clare (Siobhan Finneran), she recounts an escapade with a kidnapped sheep rampaging across town pursued by local dogs before she had to put it out of its misery with a heavy rock. If that wasn’t enough, all the dogs that bit the sheep died of poison in the sheep’s system, finishing off the anecdote with a nice little “you won’t believe this” bow.
If this anecdote seems to stretch credibility, a little bloated, or be tonally confused, you’ll be glad to know that Happy Valley Season 2 mostly manages to avoid the same descriptors. Still, compared to Season 1, it’s a bigger, messier, and more imperfect beast.
Many strands run throughout the sophomore outing’s six episodes. We kick off with Catherine discovering the body of Lynn Dewhurst, the mother of Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), in a council estate garage. She’s been badly mutilated, including in the genital area, and it doesn’t take long for the police to link the killing with two previous murders of sex workers in the area – launching the criminal investigation Operation Syracuse.
