Well I watch a heck of a lot of 6 part crime based drama on TV .. and this one is right there at the top. Violent, realistic, heart breaking and tragic. The interplay between the family characters is simply superb. I was not a great fan of Sarah Lancashire prior to watching this, but she inhabits Cawood completely, and there isn't a moment where you doubt the pain she has gone through. We binge watched all episodes (18 in total ) over about 10 days and it would have been shorter if we could!

Surprisingly good for an unknown series.

The Wire but in Yorkshire. And unlike the superficial, cartoonishly hyperbolized girl-power-rah-rah of True Detective Season 4, Happy Valley doesn't reduce its strong female lead to a banally one-dimensional superhero nor does it naively embrace toxic masculinity as a stand-in for feminism. Catherine is heroic yet suffers defeats. She keeps her composure at work, but can still express emotion. She's not a Hollywood-buff ubermensch, but is physically strong for her age and commands respect.

The 2nd serie surpasses the first, which was very good as well. But this one (script, acting, direction) is w-o-w-. The last episode is (despite) all known plots brilliantly exciting and an emotional rollercoaster. And Sarah Lancashire...well...amazing.... EDIT: Serie 3 is poorly written and direction is below average. Ouch.

Lancashire shines as a realistic veteran police sgt. who's own life is in upheaval. If you like well acted crime dramas you could do a lot worse.

Pretty good cop thriller series. Lots of Brit slang and heavy northern England accents, so we had to watch it with subtitles.

Tense

Disappointment Low level acting In the first scene with the boy who want to set himself to fire. You expect something. Nothing Nothing Nothing. You don't see nothing. There are more person affairs, then crime fighting.

The second season of Happy Valley doesn't let Catherine (Sarah Lancashire) get far away from her grief, but that's where it succeeds. The show succeeds best when rounding out its characters. Although the ending of the season felt a bit anti-climactic, I thought that served it best. It refused to get into cliches or fireworks, because that's never what the show has done.