Happy Valley wrapped at the end of Series Three, which aired on BBC One in the New Year. Sarah Lancashire, who portrayed police officer Catherine Cawood in the crime drama, was asked after the NTAs whether the success at the ceremony would spur her or Wainwright, the series creator, into making a fourth series (H/T The Radio Times). The question was met with a resounding “no.”
The former Coronation Street actress said the story was “complete” and had been best told “as a trilogy, which has been a great way to tell a story, really. The danger is to carry on and carry on and it somehow loses its potency but I think this way, we left it on top.”
Lancashire commended Wainwright during the NTA ceremony, after winning two awards. “I have to say some things about Sally Wainwright because she is Happy Valley, she is what makes it, her writing is so extraordinary, her characters are extraordinary and anyone who is in receipt of those words is the luckiest actor in the world, in truth.”
Earlier in the year, in an interview with The Radio Times, Sally Wainwright spoke of a “a definite decision” that Series Three would be the last. “Just because it’s been successful, we weren’t going to let it drift on until it became a pale shadow of itself,” the Gentleman Jack writer added.
Happy Valley Series 1-3 can be streamed on the BBC iPlayer. The series, set in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire, stars Lancashire, James Norton, Siobhan Finneran, Rhys Connah, George Costigan, Charlie Murphy, Karl Davies, Katherine Kelly, Con O’Neill, Sophie Rundle, Susan Lynch, and Derek Riddell.
