'Happy Valley's Series Finale Packs the Perfect Police Procedural Punch
If you think about it, Happy Valley has sort of been like Heat, just more Northern and less neon. Stay with me here: they’re both dramas about the exhaustive effects of pursuit, how justice and crime become so ingrained they harm all your relationships, and have a hero and villain so magnetic in their performances that we don’t realize they barely share any screen time together.
Heat comparisons aside, the climax of Happy Valley’s finale feels perfect for a police drama that’s packed a punch from day one and barely let up over its eighteen episodes. But the confrontation between Catherine and Tommy Lee Royce, two people at the absolute end of their tether forced to reckon with the violence that’s ruled their lives, feels so massive that it forces out key characters and storylines to make way for its presence.
After last week’s familial outburst, Catherine spent the night at Alison’s, where she finds a blister of pills that Alison strongly denies are hers, but rather her dodgy probation officer’s. The fact that they’re not prescription pricks Catherine’s ears, and she asks Alison to find out which pharmacist they’ve been illegally supplied from. Welcome to one of the season’s biggest storylines being wrapped up in a completely offhand manner.
