HAPPY VALLEY S3 - thread 7 to chat and muse about the last ever episode

[Blondeshavemorefun]

Several people have messaged me to ask if I will do another thread as still all chatting about it

6 is almost full so here you can linked to this one the previous 6

1
www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4710280-happy-valley-series-3-bbc1-9pm-starts-1-january-2023-no-spoilers-tv-pace?reply=123037566

2 www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4718852-happy-valley-series-3-bbc1-9pm-started-1-january-2023-no-spoilers-tv-pace-thread-2?reply=123279174

3
www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4724933-happy-valley-series-3-bbc1-sundays-9pm-no-spoilerstv-pace-thread-3?reply=123400097

4 www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4728813-happy-valley-s3-sundays-9pm-bbc-1-tv-pace-no-spoilers-thread-4?reply=123407648

5
www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4731641-happy-valley-s3-tv-pace-no-spoilers-thread-5

6
www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4736071-happy-valley-s3-tv-pace-no-spoilers-thread-6-and-episode-6-and-the-last-ever-episode-forever?reply=123662539

I think she asked him when she first went in and then again later after pressing the button.

I am glad it was character driven more than drama, LOD 'urgent exit required' type. But as I said before, I would have valued an ending of CC hugging Ryan. I wanted them to head out to the mountains together.

There were lots more red herrings than I was expecting- the double declutch, the fridge thrower/heights- no one bungee jumped or sky dived.

So, the graffiti on Rob’s car - which Ryan was wrongly accused of drawing - was another bit of a clue that old neckbeard was actually a nonce.

I think Rob will probably be done for Joanna’s murder (Pfizer was wearing gloves afaik, so probably none of his DNA at the scene of the crime) because he’s already admitted he’s a wife-beater and a control-freak. Poppy and her coat is a testament to the horrendous home life of those kids. Pfizer will be done for drug dealing and being involved in organised crime via the Tweedledums (who will drop him in it) I’m not sure how the police could tie an air-bubble in Joanna’s blood to him. But then the blister packet will tie him to Joanna, so who knows. I thought the car prang and Pfizer’s daughter filming the argument was going to lead on to something. I could have done with a 10 second shot of Pfizer’s wife opening the door to the police and realising that new decking is the least of her problems.

However, these are minor quibbles. I loved the final episode. Anyone who can make me feel sorry for TLR deserves a medal. The acting in that kitchen scene was simply superb - a final verbal duel between the two main characters who have been playing cat and mouse over 3 seasons. No need for car chases and shootouts. ‘Hello’ ‘Hiya’

Jed Mercurio take note. I invested years of my life in LOD. And don’t even get me started on The Bodyguard.

Happy Valley and all who sailed in her, take a bow!

LoD was daft but fun, The Bodyguard I thought was risible tripe. HV is in a different league.

I thought the 'ghost' of Becky was there to show that once Catherine has decided that Ryan is nothing like his dad, she can then move on from seeing Becky's body with a noose around her neck, which she used to see in her rear view mirror, and in this episode (or this series at least) by the gates.

@Cafeconleche why do you keep calling him pfizer?

Ah yes thanks guys

I thought the police officer [can't remember his name] told Catherine that Rob hadn't been charged with Joanne's murder . Then Catherine told him about Faisal and the drugs and said he lived very near to Joanna's house . He would have picked up.on this .

I thought it was good how the TLR storyline was resolved and Sarah Lancashire and James Norton were excellent in that scene. I was so pleased that Ryan not only told the truth to the police about TLR contacting him but also that he stood up for Claire. Wish there could have been a scene where Catherine told Ryan she was proud of him and that hes not like his Dad, I was hoping we were going to find out he was listening in on that conversation between Catherine and Claire.

I was a bit disappointed how the other storylines were resolved, glad to see the 2 thugs get their comeuppance and that the wedding was ruined but the neckbeard thing, one minute they're finding his fingerprints in her blood and the next hes cleared of her murder but being charged with dodgy images on his phone, I think they should have explained why he was no longer a suspect. I thought as well the Faisal thing wasn't explained that well, he seemed to be selling to one dealer in the first ep but then this one, hes been selling drugs directly to a probation officer, I thought there should have been another layer like the drug dealer was on probation and shes getting the drugs through him and then he gives up Faisal rather than going back to prison.

I had no idea TLR was going to stab them in the car, I was sure he was going back into the house to kill the old man not take the knife to kill the gangsters while driving. Darius Knežević isn't going to go down for the murder just based on TLR's confession, he can't be cross examined and any good KC would be able to cast doubt on what he said given the amount of drugs and alcohol he ingested.

Overall I liked it but there were too many loose threads they tried to wrap up at the end. Brilliant series, I'm sad we don't get any more of CC

His name is Faisal, but because he is a pharmacist someone "christened" him "Pfizer" after the pharmaceutical firm, and it was just right for him, so it stuck.

@007DoubleOSeven Pfizer was one of Faisal’s nicknames way back in an earlier thread, like ‘neckbeard’ for Rob. It works because he’s a pharmacist 🤗

@Cafeconleche oh I missed that, thanks for explaining

What I want to know is who was the daft woman who was going to marry Ivan?

If he'd ever have got to his wedding she'd have taken one look at his battered face and said 'no chance'. Or I would, anyway.

And that dreadful slum he seemed to live in! I had assumed that was just some bolt hole for those two thugs for when the going got tough, but it looked like Tweedledum & Tweedledee both actually lived there as they were in their wedding clothes when the cops burst in 😆

What woman would want him? Aim higher, ladies. We can all do better than that.

@Rightsraptor I was quite looking forward to a farcical wedding scene

No wedding, no aliens on the moors

Did we work out why poppy kept her coat on forever and ever?

The actress who played her Mother said its a trauma thing and an homage to East is East

"[The coat] is definitely to protect [herself] because of what she’s living in, the environment that she’s living in. She doesn’t want to take her coat off.’

Mollie added the coat was a nod to play East Is East, which was penned by Ayub Khan Din in the 1990s.

In it, the character of Sajit, a teen with behavioural problems who lives with a violent father, refuses to take off his parka even when he goes to bed."

metro.co.uk/2023/02/03/happy-valley-joanna-actor-mollie-winnard-on-why-poppy-wears-a-coat-18217044/

Rob wasn't cleared of Joanna's murder, he just hadn't been charged for it yet

He may or may not be charged later but they probably didn't quite have enough evidence. They may have been hoping further forensics would help them build a case or that he would slip up.

Indecent images is much easier to prove and once they have charged him with that they can hold him and he's away from the kids so the police can work on other stuff.

However Faisal may give himself away before a case is built against Rob.

I think CC telling Andy that Faisal’s house was 100 yards from Joanna’s was to make us believe that Faisal would go down for Joanna’s murder. Andy was the one who had been saying “not to jump to conclusions” and that they “needed to get to the bottom of who had been supplying her.” Well - they now have.

also - just re-watching the stand off between TLR and CC. A couple of things - massive contrast between her lovely cosy home and the home his Mum was in and where he grew up - similar/same size. Totally different.

And when they are talking she runs through his heinous crimes - and how he kicked her so hard she spent 4 weeks in hospital. He correctly pulled her up saying she did the same to him….she says “it was in the LoD” but we know that she wanted to kill him because she said that to Clare after and that it was only because the police suddenly came on scene that she didn’t.

Was Joanna's phone ever found ?

@Sidge and @noodlezoodle - I watched episodes 1 - 3 of the first series last night and there are a lot of really quite disturbing Becky flashbacks that I'd completely forgotten about. It's not a particularly sophisticated technique but I'm spotting so many callbacks to the first series that I'm guessing SW wanted to bring her back and just square that off in a non-traumatic way in the final episode. It's a wee bit unsubtle but also quite satisfying to see Becky 'alive and well'.

And I think things like a final Becky flashback show that SW very much meant to leave the loose ends loose.

Did anyone else think that Ryan and Becky were trying to get TLR and CC to go to CC’s home? When TLR has almost been killed by Darius’s brother in the field he hears Ryan and Ryan says he has had to get as far away from home as possible and then CC feels Becky’s presence briefly and is encouraged to go home?

I know we have had the debate about TLR loving Becky. I think he did in his own twisted way and I wonder if CC can also find it in herself to tell Ryan any of that last conversation - I think it must be v hard to know you were the product of a rape.

Coming out of lurking to say on the whole it was fantastic, the acting was amazing, for the most part so was the script. I loved the ending being a tense two header rather than a violent dramatic showdown, but that we did get a bit of that in the car, and that TLR wasn't two dimensional.

However, I agree I wanted to see more of the Joanna / Faisal / rob storyline in the last episode. Not because I need spoon feeding, I totally understand was happening with it, but because that storyline was shown in great detail in earlier episodes, the viewers got very invested in it, so I think it deserved more than a few sentences of exposition thrown in at the end. And as much as I enjoyed Catherine giving CID all the info to tie it together at the end, where were we supposed to think she'd had time to research the pharmacist in amongst everything else that had happened to her that day? And was she actually going to tell anyone if the detective hasn't happened to pop in? It was all a bit too convenient. It's a pet hate of mine when writers seem to run out if time and rush endings, and I had hoped it wouldn't happen with HV, because the writing is generally so good, but in the case of that one storyline, that's how I felt.

I get what people are saying about policing going on after Catherine left, but we hadn't only been seeing that storyline from Catherines point of view, we had been watching it from the others characters points of view and it had been given huge importance early on in the series, so it seemed off not to give it more prominence at the end.

I think a 90 minute episode would have done the trick (an extra 10 mins seems odd too, like they couldn't possibly edit it down to fit the original time, but didn't really want it to have a proper longer slot).

Yes they mentioned it was a no frills phone and that she only used it for calls and texts.