BBC One
It’s been a rough few days in Happy Valley with newly released Rapey Royce raping abducted Ann and rapey Ryan getting the gas face from Grandad Rich. It’s no wonder Catherine looks like she’s been eaten by a buzzard then shat over a cliff and she doesn’t know the half of it yet. Sure, there’s something a bit iffy about that Kevin bloke and his non-crime report and that house Royce was crashing in had the whiff of something suspicious but there’s nothing you could really hang your hat on and say “I could totally take that before a judge without getting told to fuck myself”. Just her luck that when the break comes it falls to rookie PC Kirsten McAskill (Sophie Rundle) a greenhorn as untested in battle as the pack of johnnies you bought in the pub toilet when you were 16.
It starts off as a routine traffic stop when Kirsten pulls over Lewis’s rape van for speeding. “Late for the opera are we, shithead?” she says but her attempt at engaging banter falls flat. She’s not the brightest but even she can’t help but be perturbed at the muffled screams for help coming from the back of the vehicle. She orders Lewis to open up the van but luckily rapey Royce is on hand to save the day by driving through at 190 mph, knocking her 65 foot in the air, crushing her against the van then reversing back over her 35 times just to be sure. It’s squashed copper on the menu tonight. “Oops!” he deadpans. God, he’s so evil. Catherine rolls up a bit later to scoop her lifeless arse off the road. “Kids!” she guffaws as she observes the tyre tracks left on her legs, face and all over her stupid tits.
Royce is on hand to save the day by driving through at 190 mph, knocking her 65 foot in the air, crushing her against the van then reversing back over her 35 times just to be sure.
So once again it’s a shitty day for Catherine. When she isn’t hallucinating her daughter’s corpse she’s having to deal with Kirsten’s widowed husbland pissing in her ear about how it was all her fault. She tells him to eat a dick. “That bitch is roadkill – deal with it” she snarks. She can’t be dealing with grieving shitheads like him when she’s got Royce to worry about. In a departure from strictly legal endeavour she breaks into the house he was staying in and has a shufti around. Beer cans, duct tape, a copy of Abduction for Dummies – it’s got all the hallmarks of a kidnapper’s lair. Even better, she finds a cute little pair of Ann’s panties on the cellar floor. “Score!” she says, sticking them in her pocket. The day is looking up.
Ann meanwhile is stuck with the Chuckle Brothers in a portacabin. It’s starting to look like she knows too much and will end up being killed. If she does know too much she’s the only fucking one on this show. Mrs Nevison is the latest to fail at life and not just because she’s dying of cancer. She arranges to chat discreetly to Catherine about the whole abducted daughter thing but then backs out just like Kevin. Speaking of whom Kev and Jenny to spend resolve the ransom money themselves and that’s the first sensible thing anyone’s said in a long time in Crappy Valley.
The verdict: Ain’t no valley low enough.
Mark out of 10: 8
