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
