{"id":28668,"date":"2023-01-15T10:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-01-15T09:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1768096"},"modified":"2023-01-15T15:26:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T14:26:39","slug":"happy-valley-creator-sally-wainwright-on-the-definite-climax-of-season-3","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/happy-valley-creator-sally-wainwright-on-the-definite-climax-of-season-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright on the \u201cdefinite climax\u201d of season 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By Amy Raphael\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 15 January 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

\n\n

Sally Wainwright knows to quit while she\u2019s ahead. Fans of Happy Valley<\/a> \u2013 and they are everywhere, both here and in the USA \u2013 might have hoped the Yorkshire-based crime drama would run for at least four or five seasons, but instead it will end with the third.<\/p>\n

Wainwright spoke to Sarah Lancashire, who plays Sergeant Catherine Cawood<\/a>, and they were in agreement. \u201cWe made a definite decision that this was going to be the final season,\u201d says Wainwright. \u201cJust because it\u2019s been successful, we weren\u2019t going to let it drift on until it became a pale shadow of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, no more Catherine sitting at the back door with her sister Clare, played by the excellent Siobhan Finneran, having a cup of tea and a cigarette. No more of the fractious but fragile Ryan, the grandson Catherine is bringing up because her daughter took her own life after she was raped by Tommy Lee Royce. And no more of the psychopathic Tommy, portrayed to perfection by James Norton, trying to get close to Ryan, despite Catherine\u2019s best efforts to stop him.<\/p>\n

The third season is just starting and it\u2019s easy to feel bereft. Since Happy Valley first aired in 2014, Wainwright\u2019s beautifully drawn characters have become part of the fabric of our lives.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) in Happy Valley.<\/span><\/figcaption> Lookout Point\/Matt Squire<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

Of course, we\u2019ve already had to wait nearly seven years for the latest episodes. What took so long? Talking on the phone from her home outside Oxford, Wainwright laughs. \u201cDuring a large part of the hiatus I was writing and directing Gentleman Jack<\/a>, which is such an intense project. I had to read and transcribe Anne Lister\u2019s diaries and turn them into a dramatic narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter season 2 of Happy Valley, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do next. It involved Ryan being old enough to have some agency in the world and to have some more developed opinions about his dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shock to see Ryan reappear as a strapping 16-year-old lad with a deep voice, but all the central cast have returned for the final run and the continuity really works \u2013 when the family sit around Catherine\u2019s dining table in the first episode, it\u2019s like seeing old friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad it feels like that,\u201d says Wainwright. \u201cThere was a conversation about recasting Ryan, but Rhys [Connah] was keen to play the part again and he\u2019s great. I think we\u2019d have had a very different show if we\u2019d recast. It wouldn\u2019t have had the same feeling because Rhys has a lovely vulnerability about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wainwright sees the world in a very particular way \u2013 as it is. Growing up in Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire, she wrote strip cartoons and then plays with her sister and, even at the age of seven, was drawn to the dialogue as \u201cthe most alive thing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Ryan and Tommy meet in Happy Valley<\/span><\/figcaption> BBC<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

After graduating from York University with a degree in English, she wrote for The Archers and Coronation Street, a discipline that led Corrie alumni such as the late Kay Mellor, Paul Abbott and Wainwright herself to create socio-political drama that is also funny.<\/p>\n

Happy Valley is often seen, rather lazily, as \u201cgritty\u201d, but that overlooks what Wainwright does so well \u2013 humour. She\u2019s included it in every drama she\u2019s written, from At Home with the Braithwaites to Scott & Bailey and Last Tango in Halifax, but there\u2019s something exceptional about the humour in Happy Valley, which comes at unexpected moments and really hits home.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s pleased to hear this, but then confesses to feeling nervous about replicating the huge success of seasons 1 and 2. \u201cI was really anxious not to write a duff third season. I really don\u2019t think it is. There\u2019s a very definite climax.<\/p>\n

\u201cA narrative has gone across all three: in season 1, Catherine and Tommy came face to face outside Ryan\u2019s school, and in season 2 they almost came face to face in the crematorium, at Tommy\u2019s mum\u2019s funeral. In season 3, there\u2019s a very big face-to-face showdown. The kind of cathartic showdown that people have waited for.\u201d She laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty dramatic.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Tommy Lee Royce is, once again, the disrupter in Happy Valley, albeit with a different look \u2013 this time he\u2019s gone full-on Jesus, with long hair, a beard and scars. There has always been an odd kind of chemistry between Tommy and Catherine, which makes it impossible to look away when they\u2019re on screen.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton).<\/span><\/figcaption> Lookout Point\/Matt Squire<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

\u201cI guess that, from a writer\u2019s point of view, the chemistry between them is [created by] presenting each character as they would like to present themselves. So even though Tommy does these terrible things, I always wanted to be fair to him and show why he does them. He\u2019s cursed with this psychopathic brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Ryan says a couple of times in this season, \u2018Tommy was born like that, it\u2019s not his fault.\u2019 And Catherine agrees with him, but she says that\u2019s why you have to throw away the key.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the first season, Tommy beat Catherine up and, of course, the tabloids complained. But Wainwright was in fact very careful about her depiction of violence; it wasn\u2019t gratuitous but rather mirrored real life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked on Happy Valley with a police adviser called Lisa Farrand. She was pretty cross with some of that criticism because it\u2019s the reality of being a cop; she\u2019s been badly beaten up twice and nearly killed once. To not reflect it in a drama that is realistic about what it\u2019s like to be a female police officer would be a whitewash.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as though Wainwright had no previous experience of writing cop dramas; in fact, she was approached by the BBC to write what became Happy Valley following the success of Scott & Bailey, ITV\u2019s police procedural that starred Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp as detectives. What was her starting point? \u201cI wanted to make it different from Scott & Bailey, so the most obvious thing was to have someone in uniform.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Sally Wainwright.<\/span><\/figcaption> David M. Benett\/Dave Benett\/Getty Images<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

\u201cI was heavily influenced by Juliet Bravo [BBC1 1980\u201385], which I watched as a teen. Nurse Jackie [the US comedy drama] had a profound effect on me and I wanted to create my own Jackie Peyton, by turning her into a police officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was also a 2009 documentary called Shed Your Tears and Walk Away by Jez Lewis, about the drug and alcohol culture in Hebden Bridge among a certain age group. It\u2019s really heart-breaking but brilliant. I got the cast to watch it before we started filming season 1. It helped set the tone for what we were trying to achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent years, Wainwright started directing as well as writing. To date, she\u2019s written, directed and produced more than half a dozen episodes of Happy Valley and Gentleman Jack and a drama about the Bront\u00eb sisters, To Walk Invisible. Directing has to be the antidote to writing, surely?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the complete opposite. Writing is very lonesome and I love nothing more than being on my own. I\u2019m not a sociable person. I recently decided that I\u2019m slightly autistic and that social interaction is actually quite painful for me. But when I\u2019m directing, because there\u2019s so much to talk about, so much intensity and detail, I come alive. It\u2019s the only time I feel like I\u2019m good at being sociable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her desire to direct grew from the frustration of handing the script over to someone who doesn\u2019t always get it in the same way that she does. She also acknowledges that there\u2019s still a paucity of female directors because women don\u2019t think it\u2019s their right to stand behind a camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it requires confidence, but also it takes a certain type of woman to direct. It\u2019s about having an incredibly tough mindset. I don\u2019t have a thick skin, so I have to consciously put on a coat of armour and not take anything as an insult or negative comment.\u201d<\/p>