Happy Valley ending is being called ‘one of the greatest television finales of all’

Spoiler warning for the Happy Valley finale!

One of the key tenets of making a brilliant TV show is to stick the landing and deliver an ending that the viewers will love to talk about for years to come.

You can bring your audience on a brilliant journey but if things end badly it can leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth of fans, just look at the way Game of Thrones ended.

With that in mind, it's a good thing that Happy Valley delivered a brilliant final episode which plenty of viewers are hailing as 'one of the greatest television finales of all'.

It wasn't easy, with the show penned by Sally Wainwright having just an hour and 10 minutes to wrap up all sorts of plot threads and let us see if Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) would finally get that retirement trip in her Land Rover she's been talking about.

Then there was the whole Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) situation following the criminal's dramatic escape from custody and attempts to contact son Ryan (Rhys Connah).

On top of that there was the unsolved murder committed by pressured pharmacist Faisal (Amit Shah), plus everything going on with abusive teacher Rob (Mark Stanley).

BBC

It's a lot for any show to get through, and fortunately Happy Valley didn't disappoint as it sorted out everything it had to wrap up and as one fan put it, delivered an ending 'worth waiting for'.

After nine years on our screens it's so satisfying to see everything get sorted once and for all, with another viewer calling it 'possibly the best drama finale ever'.

Actor Robert Lindsay declared it to be 'a definitive ending to a brilliant series', while someone else said it was 'utterly perfect' and had them 'laughing through tears'.

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Sanjeev Bhaskar called the Happy Valley ending 'extraordinary across the board' and said it was 'utterly compelling from the first ever ep to the finale'.

One of the main reasons fans have been in love with Happy Valley is the stunning set of performances from the cast, not least from leading star Sarah Lancashire as Catherine Cawood.

Her climactic confrontation in the final episode with the evil Tommy Lee Royce was worth the price of admission alone, with the cruel criminal dousing himself in petrol and setting himself alight in Catherine's kitchen.

Then there was the emotional reunion between Catherine and sister Claire (Siobhan Finneran) making 'I think I might have singed one of your crocheted blankets' into one of the most heartfelt lines ever spoken on TV.

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If viewers had any sort of grumble with the Happy Valley finale it's that there wasn't more of it, as fans said they 'could easily have had another 20 minutes on the loose ends'.

While that may be the case there's no doubting that the vast majority of Happy Valley's legion of fans absolutely loved what the final episode managed to do in the runtime it had, and the key story of the clash between Catherine and Tommy over young Ryan was executed brilliantly.