Happy Valley pulled off one of the hardest tricks in TV

Sarah Lancashire as Sergeant Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley

(Picture: PA Media)

Happy Valley has gripped the nation since its return on New Year’s Day, but could it pull off that most difficult act and end well? Many other great shows have stumbled at this hurdle — but last night’s finale could not have been better. Sergeant Catherine Cawood is gone forever from our screens, yet this episode felt like her perfect send-off. Sometimes it’s good to leave people not wanting more.

Writer Sally Wainwright had a gargantuan challenge to tie this all up — and in just 70 minutes. Would Tommy Lee Royce kill Catherine? Would Catherine kill him? Would Ryan have to step in to save his grandmother? In the end it was none of those things. It was far better.

So, be warned, spoiler alert: of course Catherine and Tommy have their showdown. Following a scene of fairly shocking violence, Tommy escapes from crime boss Darius Knežević’s murderous goons, getting injured in the process, and makes his way over to break into Catherine’s house.

When she finds him the next day, he’s in a terrible way, washing pills down with whisky. They talk. And this is where Wainwright’s writing makes the show take flight.

There was no final fight between the two — no exploding cars or wrestling on a cliff edge (this is Hebden Bridge, after all). But the words spoken over the kitchen table, expertly crafted, spoken by two of Britain’s very best actors, were more potent than any Hollywood chase.

There was violence in them, there was pathos, there was understanding and there was a form of closure. It was breathtaking, tense and the pinnacle of what dialogue on the small screen can be. (Though admittedly there were also pyrotechnics at the end.)

Other questions were answered by action offscreen. The investigation into Knežević was back on and it was fairly clear that both the coercive, abusive PE teacher and the drug-dealing pharmacist were going to get their just desserts too — we just weren’t going to see it.

That felt right. All anyone really wanted was for Catherine and Tommy’s story to reach a conclusion and for Catherine to leave the force with a chance to start healing.

Some shows have left their viewers sorely disappointed, other have left them baffled, but Wainwright gave us the perfect farewell to Happy Valley.