Happy Valley is back soon!

[ILikeToClean]

Just saw the trailer for a new series of this - can't wait!

[EnthusiasmDisturbed]

Did John die?

Assuming he did but people survive the most horrendous accidents

Was it left open so we don't actually know if he did or not or did I miss something ?

[hollyisalovelyname]

Strange Catherine doesn't meet up with her other grandchild.
I'm not the only one who found it very difficult to hear.

[diddl]

I didn't think that her son had been seeing someone else, I hope he'd have been given a bollocking if so!

I thought that he wife had PND.

Well, he said she was acting "crazy"?

Would have been more interested in that than the trafficking!

[LoisWilkersonsLastNerve]

Daniel cheated, it was mentioned quite early on. I really enjoyed it again. I hope there's another series.

[diddl]

I missed that

[StillStayingClassySanDiego]

Daniel's cheating was mentioned when SL met with her Therapist.

[MissTurnstiles]

I'm sure that Catherine said something in S1 about worrying that some kind of 'bad blood' would come out in Ryan from TLR - possibly in relation to some naughtiness at school. Can anyone who's watched S1 more recently confirm?

[GypsyFl0ss]

God that was fantastic.

I too think she was imagining how TLR's bad blood might show itself in Ryan in the years to come . There's never been any hint of abuse from Becky's Dad. I think her thoughts were centring on what one does to protect your own even in the hardest circumstances.

The only jarring thing for me was the letter to TLR. I just can't see how that would have been allowed.

[Cherrypie32]

The letter looked like it had been opened, as I'm sure his Mail would be vetted, so how with a court order against him would it have got through? Speaking as someone who was so invested in Doctor Foster recently to make up all kinds of better more twisted storylines than the writer I can see how lines of thought go here but I'm new to Happy Valley and I think SL's worries and fears for her grandson were manifested by what happened to Alison. And I think she realised that she would never truly be able to protect him from his future.

[Effendi]

Just watched it. Excellent telly!
I laughed at 'handbrake' and the copper falling over on the platform.
SL has come a long way and is fantastic.

Season 4 of Last Tango starts filming in autumn.

[LillianGish]

I thought Catherine's look at the end was her trying work out how to tell Ryan the truth about his father - how to "find the right language" and realising that if she doesn't they might end up like Daryl and Alison. And also realising that he is his father's son (the first dog he asked for was a Rotweiler) and that she has to face this head on by talking about it not by trying to pretend he isn't.

[lem73]

I thought her looking at Ryan was because she finally realised he was going to have to be able to talk about his father in order to be a healthy adult. It was driving me mad throughout the series that she kept saying 'hes not your dad'. The poor boy was desperate to understand who he was and where he came from.

[GypsyFl0ss]

Yes I agree. How do you tell a young lad just what his father has done.

[Gwenhwyfar]

"There's never been any hint of abuse from Becky's Dad."

Exactly. The parallels with Darryl and Ryan is that they're both sons of rape, not that they're both of incest. Also, that Catherine has never explained things properly to Ryan (finding the language).

[KenDoddsDadsDog]

Yes he was Darryl's dad.

[LatinForTelly]

Interesting that we were all talking about finding the right language last week (with the excellent posts from drspouse) and it featured in the last episode.

I thought the various endings were good, if all very sad. I liked the low-key way Catherine tackled Frances. Also her holding Daryl's mum as she read her her rights. And the farcical chase of John set against the horror of his suicide.

I liked SL's little line 'there's more coppers up there than a prime time tv show' or similar.

If I had to be really picky, I would say there was slightly too much to wrap up in the last episode, but will forgive that for the fantastic acting and script.

[hollyisalovelyname]

I thought the scene with SL and Alison was just brilliantly acted - SL holding her as she slipped in and out of consciousness, SL showed such humanity and still did her job. Great writing and acting.

[Blondeshavemorefun]

Agree she mumbles and her weird accent so have subtitles on

[hollyisalovelyname]

I hate using subtitles so I missed a fair bit of the dialogue between Alison and Catherine.
I felt at the end Catherine was looking at Ryan and wondering how she would explain his birth circumstances to him, and cause him anguish as he was happy and innocent there with his gran, grand aunt and uncle hoping for a dog.
I didn't like his choices of dog breed though

[lem73]

I thought Frances took the disappointment a bit too calmly. Will her revenge be a possible storyline for next series?

[LoisWilkersonsLastNerve]

Creepy Frances was scaring the bejeesus out of me lem. So they likely will.

[southeastdweller]

I'd have liked to have known more about Frances and why she did what she did. This was a great series, but I wish it'd been twelve episodes like they do in America to give the characters and stories more time to develop.

[drspouse]

I watched it last night as I was out on Tues and DH was ironing with our super duper steam generating iron so the subtitles were a must.

I did wonder if Catherine was thinking "just like his father" when Ryan suggested all the dog breeds but I also wonder if Ryan feels the need to protect his family and/or he is trying to be like the hard lads at school because he feels that means he can be like his dad (his idea of how to do things rather than "blood must out"). Has anyone read The Casual Vacancy? In it Cubby who is adopted tries to take on a "hard", in his eyes "authentic" persona because he feels that his "real" personality from his birth family would be like that. Again, his adoptive parents have told him nothing about his origins (to be fair they sound even worse than Ryan's!).

I wasn't sure how we knew that Darryl was the result of incest? Was that introduced at the start? It would certainly explain how his mother wasn't that much older than him.

[Clawdy]

Catherine was talking about Alison's story at the end of the episode as she was walking with her family, and she explained that Alison had told her the sad truth about her life and how Daryl was conceived.