Happy Valley is a BBC drama, was aired in April 2014. 

I remember watching this in my student halls, stitching together one of my many comfort blankets I was making for an installation. The show soon became the highlight of my week and the prospect of a second season has got me very excited.

The backstory of the first series is, a police sergeant’s daughter Becky Cawood was brutally raped by Tommy Lee Royce and as a result of the rape fell pregnant, six weeks after the birth of the child she hung herself.

The first episode starts eight years after the above event happened, displaying how the family had fallen apart as a result of the suicide. Tommy Lee Royce had been newly released from prison, not for the rape as you might have assumed but for a drug deal gone wrong. He knows nothing of the child or the suicide and is adamant that he did not rape Becky.

Throughout the series there is a kidnapping that spirals out of control, Yorkshire police sergeant Catherine Cawood later comes face to face with the man who had destroyed her family, Tommy Lee Royce.

So much happens within the show it would be impossible for me to write about it all in just one small post. I can only highly recommend you to watch the first series before you tune in tonight.

The level of acting is beyond incredible. You may recognize James Norton who is currently staring in the BBC adaptation of War and Peace, which is aired on Sunday at 9pm. In War and Peace he plays the charming Prince Andrei Bolkonsky who has been compared to a Russian Mr Darcy, as you can imagine I am also in love with that show too, but lets not go too far off track…Happy Valley. James Norton plays the psychopathic Tommy Lee Royce a polar opposite to War and Peace’s Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, you’ll have to watch the show yourself and come to your own conclusion.

 Tommy Lee Royce

Prince Andrei Bolkonsky

 I think it is safe to say I am beyond excited to watch the very first episode of Season 2, which will be aired Tuesday 9^th February on BBC1 at 9pm, or you can catch it on the BBC iplayer.

Life

Life. A single word title, it sadly doesn’t give much away. To be perfectly honest this film would have passed me by with a blink of an eye.

The cases imagery of two men walking in front of a brash blue and white background hardly makes it an enticing buy and lets face it, showcasing Robert Pattinson as a leading man doesn’t make me grab the film off the shelf with a sense of uncountable excitement.

But with all that said I had heard about this film a while ago, a story based upon the friendship of photographer Dennis Stock and James Dean (if you do not know who James Dean is then shame on you!!). From and artists perspective I was intrigued and hoped and prayed that the portrayal of the main characters would be up to a considerable standard.

A loose description of the film without giving away any spoilers would be…a struggling photographer (Dennis Stock) is trying to make his break away from red carpet snap shots and becomes intrigued with an up and coming actor (James Dean) he sees the potential impact this young man is going to have on the future of movies and is determined to have a shoot with him. Once given the go ahead on a new assignment to shoot Dean for a spread in Life Magazine the journey of frustration, creativity and eventually friendship begins.

Ultimately this film was very slow to begin with and it took me a while to be convinced by Pattinson’s performance as Dennis Stock. In my opinion a good actor needs to be able to convince their audience that they are not ‘pretending’ from the moment they are seen on screen or stage. Sadly this could not be said for Pattinson’s performance but please bare with him, within 15 minutes or so of the film my opinion changed, it was as if he himself became more comfortable with the character with every minute. Although he should have portrayed this from the opening credits by the end of the film you forget about all the awkward unknowing displayed at the beginning. Dane DeHaan who played James Dean, on the other hand is an entirely different conversation. The level of acting was consistent throughout the entire film and while we the public think we know everything there is to known about James Dean, DeHaan was able to display a true tortured vulnerability of the character, which I would have never thought possible. When someone says the name James Dean, I always thought of the beautiful face, the fast cars and of course the movies. To see him portrayed is such a frustrated tortured manner is something I would not have expected.

The photographs that were produced for Life Magazine were beautiful but it was the candid shots that first caught my attention. I’ve added a few of my favourites from the shoot for you to feast your eyes upon.

I would recommend this film to any James Dean fan, but like I have previously said, it is a film you just need to bare with, it does get so much better, I promise.

Dear Jane Austen, Mr Darcy Ruined Everything.

When writing something like this, there is always a point where the writer simply has no idea where to start. Am I to give an entire life story or just fill you in on the good bits? I am still undecided.

            Perhaps I should start with an introduction. My name is Hannah. I am twenty-five years old, something I feel is an important fact to state from the very beginning, as I am aware that I can be a bit of an old woman. Not am I only a bit of an old woman who can think of nothing better than to come home to a glass of wine and a good book after a long day at work I am also a crazy cat lady. I have two cats, Misty (Moo) and Olly (Wally). Both are rescue cats and they are my world. I refer to them as my babies, which some people find quite unsettling, but I quite frankly couldn’t give a dam, I love them and I miss them like crazy when I am not at home.

            ‘Jane Austen ruined my life’ is a title of a book that could quite possibly describe my life, well love life to be more exact. I am officially ruined by the fictional expectations that were forced upon my subconscious mind by that woman when she put pen to paper over 200 years ago and created the wonderful Mr. Darcy. I wonder if she had any concept of the profound effect she has caused upon the minds of women all over the world, could she have known the damage Darcy could have created to the love lives of thousands of women? Why cant life be like a Jane Austen novel? What happened to the manners, the dancing, the balls and gowns? I am fully aware that times have changed but I feel there is something very important within these texts, that have been lost to our society resulting in women, like myself holding onto their Mr. Darcy, Captain Wentworth, Cornel Brandon, Henry Tilney, Mr. Knightley and the list goes on. The books give an impression of a time when men were gentlemen and women were ladies allowing the reader to escape from the sad reality of the drunken nights out, being groped by a man that thinks that’s acceptable behavior just because you’re wearing a skirt or worse thinks you’ll be going back to his for a quick shag just because he bought you a drink.

            As I have been writing this I have become aware that it has slowly turned into what could be considered to be a feminist rant and it wasn’t meant to be. Not all men are like the examples I just stated and truth be known those men would not behave as such if we had no allowed it to happen in the first place.

            So…the reason I am to die an old crazy cat lady with a house full of recuse cats all named after my favorite boybands is because of Jane Austen. Shame on you Miss Austen, look what you did.