CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Sergeant Sarah is back… now watch the lowlife tremble!
Happy Valley (BBC One and iPlayer)
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Tell Vera she doesn’t need to bother. Ted Hastings can also stay home. Telly’s most capable cop is back, and he’s in no mood for bullshit.
If Sergeant Catherine Cawood led the police force, all serious crimes would be solved by lunchtime, leaving afternoons free to crop the ears of local hooligans.
Almost seven years after the previous series of Happy Valley (BBC1) ended, the grandmother played by Sarah Lancashire is still stemming the tide of drugs and violence in her West Yorkshire town.
She is talking about retirement. She even bought a Land Rover for a celebratory trek to the Himalayas. But she’s not counting on Tommy Lee Royce, the rapist and murderer who tried to destroy her family.
No Nonsense: Sarah Lancashire as Sergeant Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley
James Norton is superbly menacing as Royce, sitting in his prison cell with a crudely stitched scar across his forehead, staring into space with psychotic calm. Long-haired and smiling, he looks like Satan dressed up as Jesus for a costume party.
Even if you don’t remember the torturous intricacies of the previous series, and the two-minute recap that opened this episode wasn’t much help, it’s clear to anyone that Royce is evil incarnate.
Sergeant Cawood will have to face him alone. His senior officers are wetter than a weekend in Huddersfield and his family is a bunch of walking bottoms.
His sister Clare (Siobhan Finneran) is a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict; she holds together, these days, but isn’t much use in a crisis.
And life continues to be a succession of crises for the sergeant. His truculent grandson Ryan (Rhys Connah) seems secretly obsessed with Royce, his biological father.
Meanwhile, a pair of plastic Kray Twins from Eastern Europe are taking over the local drug trade.
“James Norton (center) is magnificently menacing as Royce, sitting in his prison cell with a scar crudely stitched across his forehead”
Each Happy Valley series has highlighted the endemic threat of drug abuse on Britain’s poorest streets. This time, the emphasis is on the black market for prescription drugs and addicts like Jo (Mollie Winnard), a bullied young mother, married to the controlling and stalker Rob Hepworth (Mark Stanley), who is Ryan’s sports teacher.
Rob’s assault on Jo, grabbing her by the throat while physically and verbally beating her while her young daughters hid below, was a truly shocking and disturbing moment.
In a gripping scene, Sergeant Cawood calls out to the Hepworths, slowly asserting her authority over her husband without flexing her muscles. Her bravado ricochets off her, her attempts to dominate her and then ingratiate themselves leave no trace.
“It is obvious to anyone that Royce (left) is the embodiment of evil”
He’s seen his guy so often that he barely needs to talk to him after introducing himself, nullifying his attempts to talk every time.
Just as satisfying is the opening sequence, on the moors, where the sergeant is called in when workers draining a reservoir discover human remains. “It turned out nice again,” he says, borrowing the phrase from George Formby.
She takes a long look at the skeletal torso, notes the bullet hole in the skull, checks the jaw, and when the forensic expert arrives, she casually announces that she can identify the bones: “I’d know those teeth anywhere, I cut it off.” once for a public order offense and he bit me.
Writer-director Sally Wainwright’s beautifully taut script, without wasting a word, constantly underscores Sergeant Cawood’s most important quality: her experience. As a grandmother, as a veteran police officer, as a pillar of her community, she brings a strength that cannot be achieved through shortcuts. He is needed all his life.
Sergeant Cawood will never be considered for promotion. To his colleagues, especially the senior officers, she is a middle-aged woman who has been around forever. But that is exactly what makes it so effective and so irreplaceable.