SPOILER: ‘Hello,’ he said, pointing his taser at Tommy Lee…his own piece of holy hell.

“Hello,” Sergeant Catherine Cawood said, sidling down her own corridor, instincts on red alert, boots squealing with tension.

“Hi,” she said, sounding like pop star Adele, if Adele were a seasoned policewoman who suspected that a blood-smeared homicidal maniac was sitting in her kitchen, sipping her whiskey and swallowing handfuls of her painkillers, which is exactly the thing. what was he doing. doing.

“Hello,” he said, unbuckling his taser and pointing it at the terrible figure of Tommy Lee Royce, his nemesis, his own piece of hell, the man who had caused an eruption of pain and death in his family life.

‘Hello,’ he replied, as casual as someone who has dropped in for a cup of coffee. No, I didn’t want an ambulance, thanks anyway. Or a cookie. Tommy was here for revenge.

It says everything about the quality of this series, and the exceptional writing by Sally Wainwright, that Catherine (Sarah Lancashire) and Tommy (James Norton) didn’t come face to face until 50 minutes into this gripping finale.

And that their epic showdown wasn’t a desperate blow throbbing with machismo and squashed noses, but devastating words spoken across a scrubbed pine kitchen table.

There were things that needed to be said, and of course Catherine said them.

About his daughter Becky, who Royce had raped and then killed herself. About Ryan, the illegitimate product of that violent relationship, the grandson Catherine had raised herself.

He called Royce “a nasty little kid brain tricked into a big man’s body” and told him “there’s a difference between getting someone pregnant and being a parent.”

Someone had to do it! His brutal petulance and his emotional immaturity at this, cornerstones of the true psychopath, were terrifying to behold. “You got it all wrong, old bitch,” he moaned.

Tommy had been flipping through Catherine’s photo albums, delighted to find a spark of humanity in himself when he looked at the photos of Becky and Ryan, the family he’d made but never had.

In an earlier scene, Catherine had stared at those albums as well, her pain undiminished when she came to the empty pages depicting the unlived life of her long-dead daughter. So much history between these two, so much pain. How could she ever heal herself?

I have done the best I could. I’m just tired now,” Catherine said at the beginning of the finale, leaving flowers on Becky’s grave on the eve of her retirement from the police force.

Officer 9675 was leaving, but not before clearing out her desk, skipping her farewell party, solving pending crimes, and clearing up all the loose ends.

It was all very satisfactory. So many TV series build you up, only to be horribly disappointed at the end.

Often, there comes a point where the demands of the drama exceed the limits of the talents on offer, leaving viewers confused by the rushing schools of herring and that final, desperate, unbelievable twist in the story.

Like when idiot Detective Buckles was ridiculously unmasked as the villain in the latest Line Of Duty series.

Or when protection officer David Budd came out of a drain in a suicide vest at the end of The Bodyguard.

The latest from Killing Eve, the latest Game of Thrones, don’t even get me started on The Sopranos.

All that time spent, all that concentration, only for the outcome to be as disappointing as a slamming door.

Happy Valley was not like that. Happy Valley did not disappoint.

In fact, Happy Valley provided one of the best dramatic endings ever seen on British television; as poignant and unexpected as it is exciting and exhilarating, with moments of stifling emotion and flashes of humor.

“I may have singed one of your crochet blankets,” Catherine told her sister Clare (Siobhan Finneran) after Tommy blew himself up in their kitchen.

It was particularly moving when he realized that education, not nature, had won out and that his investment in Ryan (Rhys Connah) had paid off.

“For all his faults, he has grown into a normal, happy, well-adjusted boy,” she said, sobbing.

In some of the final scenes, the ever-obedient Sergeant Cawood asked a superior officer what would happen to the two girls, whose mother had been murdered and whose father, thanks to his efforts, was in jail. ‘There is a grandmother,’ he said.

There is a grandmother. And thank God for that. Meanwhile, Officer 9675 has left the building.

Like she said, she did the best she could. And do you know something? It was more than enough.