“In this troubled town, troubles are found.” And don’t we know it, as the BBC series “Happy Valley” comes to its final dénouement.
I’ve just finished the final episode of Series 3 in this splendid drama so beautifully crafted by writer Sally Wainwright and superbly acted by Sarah Lancashire as the formidable police Sgt Catherine Cawood.
As it happens we got to know the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, Hebden Bridge in particular, during our nine years in Rochdale. In fact, we sent two of our daughters to the same (posh) school in Ripponden as pharmacist Faisal Bhatti.
Bleak, with ever-present streaks of green algae on the ever-present stone. And lots of hills. You need to be tough.
Spoiler alert. Those of you who have yet to watch the series, and in particular those yet to see the final episode which was only shown earlier this month, may want to postpone reading this blog.
The whole drama is constructed around the taut relationship between Cawood and her tormenter, life-long criminal and psychopath Tommy Lee Royce. He comes across as total evil given the way he readily abuses and even kills (I make it five). It was he who has wrecked Cawood’s life by raping her daughter and so causing her suicide some ten years or so before the first series, leaving her to bring up the resultant Ryan.
And so we follow Cawood who despite her deeply- troubled life comes across as a highly proficient, street-wise cop who knows her patch through and through. In the opening scene in Series 3 she even manages, while standing in six inches of mud at Booth Wood reservoir (where we regularly picnicked) to identify a decomposed skeleton as a local criminal who went missing some eight years earlier.
Both Cawood and Royce are deeply flawed human beings. However, Cawood has a profound need to see justice done while showing a hard-nosed compassion for those – like her – who are the victims. We have every sympathy for her as she tries to hold her life together while doing the right thing, not always successfully.
In contrast, Royce – convincingly acted by James Norton who in another drama is the saintly vicar of Grantchester – shows all the usual psychopathic traits of compulsive lying, manipulation, fanciful ambition and a complete lack of empathy along with a narcissistic obsession with his appearance.
It’s all good television as the ordinary, everyday folk of West Yorkshire muddle through life with the occasional kidnap, blackmail and murder with the ever-present drug trade taking its toll. You walk the streets of Halifax at your peril.
But the final episode is different, strangely anticipated by the very opening scene of series 1.
So the mortally-wounded Royce seeks refuge in Catherine’s very house, thinking mistakenly that it was empty. In fact, Catherine is upstairs, looking wistfully through her family photograph albums. Do they meet in some final cosmic battle? Well, not yet. She goes unsuspecting to Halifax nick, leaving just in time to build up the dramatic tension.
But when they do finally meet in her cluttered and gaudily decorated kitchen it is on her terms. Mind you, she is holding her taser as he is holding his wounds. The whole of the drama has been heading for this point, the unknotting as the French would say.
And to our surprise Royce shows contrition and even offers his forgiveness. In fact, through the whole series he appears to hold a genuine affection for his son as he now belatedly realises how Cawood has cared for him.
Intriguingly earlier in the series we learned that while in prison he does develop a relationship with the chaplain, who as it turns out breaks his confidence.
Catherine would have nothing of it as she rehearses his many sins, especially those against her daughter. No way is she taken in by his remorse – although in an earlier episode she actually committed herself to offering her forgiveness in the unlikely event of Royce repenting.
So we are left in the air. Do we go along with Catherine’s world-weary wisdom of the Old Testament writer, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly?” (Proverbs 26:11). In reality there comes a point when we can step out of God’s grace
Or do we go along with the Psalmist who sings: “For with the Lord there is mercy and loving-kindness, and with Him is plenteous redemption.” (Psalm 130:7).
As it happens I was reading this morning the wonderful prophecy of Isaiah: ‘“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.”’ (Isaiah 55:11).
God is totally different from us. As John Calvin observes: “There is nothing that troubles our consciences more than when we think of God is like ourselves.”
But how is God so very different from us? Isaiah spells it out:
“Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” (Isaiah 55:7)
Dane Ortlund writes: “God doesn’t limit himself to working with the unspoiled parts of us that remain after a lifetime of sinning. His power runs so deep that he is able to redeem the very worst parts of our past into the most radiant parts of our future. But we need to take those dark miseries to him.”
In other words, we can go to the cross of Christ. There’s always hope, for both Cawood and Royce. For each of us.
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