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The nation is gripped by Happy Valley, says Fleet Street Fox. But would a family WhatsApp solve all their problems?
SARGE: I’m Catherine, I’m 47, I’m divorced, I live with my sister – who’s a recovering heroin addict – I have two grown-up children, one dead and one who doesn’t speak to me, a grandson, and umpteen BAFTAs I’ve had to hide in the spare room. So. It’s complicated. Let’s talk about you.
CLUR: You said you wouldn’t keep mentioning it. I’m clean. And I have met a Nisa bloke.
SARGE: I told you so. He might be nice, but he’s hell of a wheezy. He gets out of puff just ringing up me pads.
WHYAN: Does anyone know anything about me dad?
SARGE: I’m obsessed with catching me dead daughter’s rapist, Tommy Lee Royce, who ‘s just been let out of jail and seems equally obsessed about me. It’s all a bit Oedipal, and no mistake.
RICHARD THE JOURNALIST: I know we’re divorced but I’m just going to hang out in your kitchen like a bad smell for narrative purposes.
SARGE: Right, and I’ll be the only copper who happily tells a journo everything they know and never worries about getting b******ed for it. I do the b******ing around here.
WHYAN: What do all those asterisks mean? Why have I been covered in petrol by this weirdo who says ‘e’s me dad?
ALL: Shuddup, Ryan. You’re too young to be told owt.
NEV: My daughter was kidnapped in series 2 and no-one knows why I’m still here, but apparently we’re family now. Would you like to live in me Yorkshire mansion, or me foreign villa?
ALISON: I shot me son but Sarge was pretty nice about it really, so I’ll lend her a car to tail her own sister and then fiddle darkly with her alternator. Don’t mind me.
SARGE: I’ve just single-handedly wrestled a ne’er do well t’ground and cuffed ‘im. Knew that would ‘appen, and I didn’t need no fancy forensics degree neither. Fancy a cuppa?
ALISON: Ooh I could murder one.
WHYAN: Has it ever flooded in Hebden Bridge? Only there’s no flood defences, and no-one mentions it, even when it rains.
CLUR: It only floods trouble in this family. Why don’t you play some video games and talk to strangers instead?
INSPECTOR MIKE TAYLOR: Sarge, I’ve been following your instructions for three series and I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be t’other way around.
SARGE: Have you single-handedly arrested your own daughter’s rapist while sustaining a punctured spleen? Can you identify half a corpse in a barrel of concrete with one hard stare? I’m basically Paddington if he ate grit sandwiches, but with a taser and a better sense of smell. No? Well then shut yer cakehole my lad and crack on with doin’ me paperwork, I’ve got me own stalker to stalk and there’s not enough hours in the day.
WHYAN: I’ve made friends with a demonic teaching assistant. Is it all right if she gets me to write a letter to me dad? She says he’s really nice.
DICK JOURNO: Don’t ask questions, lad. Not that I’ve written about your dad or have cuttings files about it all over t’house or am naturally inclined to say ‘ooh I bet you didn’t know this’ about things, what with being a reporter. On the murdering scumbag who ultimately destroyed my marriage and family, I shall remain as schtum as a super-injunction.
CLUR: I’ve texted yer, Ryan.
SARGE: I’ve had to thump three people today, and ruptured the appendix of a drug kingpin on a raid in a sub-plot, then I had to tell the professional ethics people about how I’d done it as an ample-arsed middle-aged granny and they ought to be in school. And now I can smell Tommy Lee Royce thinkin’ about me.
RYAN: Speaking of school, I’ve met another demonic teacher who seems to have murdered his wife. Is it all right if we’re friends?
CLUR: Let’s not talk about it! Who wants to watch Corrie?
SARGE: Oh, stuff that. I’m takin’ me Land Rover with the new alternator and goin’ t’Imalayas, there’s no crime there and I can beat a mountain into submission with me earthy observations.
WHYAN: Shall I just rely on me smackhead aunt and her alcoholic, asthmatic boyfriend for guidance, then?
TOMMY: Heeeeeeere’s Tommy! Admit it, you’ve been thinking about me!
WHYAN: DAD! the subplots have gone mental. Will you tell me what’s goin’ on?
SARGE: Sigh. I’m never gettin’ t’Imalayas, am I? Crime follows me like a lost puppy.
CLUR: You’ve figured it out. I’ve been taking Ryan to meet his dad. With Neil. It were all his fault, really.
NEIL: Wheeeeeeeeze.
SARGE: The teachers I didn’t mind, but ‘e’s a right knicker sniffer, that one.
DICK: Can I say something for narrative purposes, which is that I always loved you and we should never have split up.
SARGE: Sigh. I’m never gettin’ t’Imalayas, am I? Crime follows me like a lost puppy.
CLUR: You’ve figured it out. I’ve been taking Ryan to meet his dad. With Neil. It were all his fault, really.
NEIL: Wheeeeeeeeze.
SARGE: The teachers I didn’t mind, but ‘e’s a right knicker sniffer, that one.
DICK: Can I say something for narrative purposes, which is that I always loved you and we should never have split up.
CLUR: It weren’t my fault, I did my best, but I am pretty useless. If only we’d had a family WhatsApp or something we could have talked this all out a decade ago and it would never have got this bad.
TOMMY: Come and get me, Sarge. I mean Mum. I mean Granny. Ooh, this is dark. Shall we die together, locked in a fatal embrace?
WHYAN: Why did no-one tell me what me dad was like in an age-appropriate way in series 1? Was the internet washed away in the floods we don’t mention? Why does the only journalist I know not want to tell me stuff? How come I can chat on video games but I don’t know how to Google me own dad? Why do we need to record 5 different endings when the last 17 episodes have made very little sense? Will any of you ever express affection? And why aren’t we allowed to watch Corrie?
SARGE: And that’s why we call you Whyan. Now shuddup and do yer GCSEs. I’ll put t’kettle on and show you what being monosyllabic really means wi’ me next BAFTA speech.
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