CHARACTER WEEK: HAPPY VALLEY SAVES THE SELF-PITYING DRUNK

This week I'm looking at some examples of the ways that shows introduce characters.

During the pandemic I spent a lot of time rewatching shows I love-FRINGE, HALT AND CATCH FIRE, PARKS & REC, BABYLON 5 and THE WIRE all featured heavily in the rotation. In fact it was watching these shows and then wanting to outline them or think about how they worked that got me thinking about creating this blog.

HAPPY VALLEY was another on my Must Watch Because Pandemic list. It's a Sally Wainwright creation, and stars the brilliant Sarah Lancashire as  Catherine Cawood, a police sergeant running the shop in her small West Yorkshire town while grieving her daughter's suicide and raising her grandson Ryan with her sister Clare (the equally marvelous Siobahn Finneran). 

 

Wainwright's introduction of Catherine is masterful not only for the way it establishes  her character but the world of the show. Thanks to the wonders of the internets (and the fact the show is a bit on the older side, at this point) I can post it here so you can enjoy it for yourself. 

  

We start in media res, with the situation established pretty quick--drunk guy wants to light himself on fire because his girl's been cheating, while others in the housing project watch (and in some cases laugh). 

It's immediately clear, we're not dealing with a world of criminal masterminds here. This is the hardscrabble meets the absurd. 

From the moment we meet Catherine she knows exactly what she needs--not just a fire extinguisher, but sunglasses to protect her eyebrows; and she knows what to do--keep him talking and try to distract him from himself, a goal that Wainwright also uses brilliantly to thumbnail (in as few as a couple dozen words) Catherine's family members and key life issues: she's 47, divorced, her sister is an addict, her daughter is dead and her son won't speak to her.

That's it, that's the opening. There's no big rescue, no calisthenics, no violence--none of the things you would normally get to introduce the protagonist at the top of a police drama. But that defiance of expectations is part of what gives Catherine definition. She's got competence and expertise, yes. But she also has a uniquely wry and maternal sensibility. 

It's no coincidence that the drunk is a 20 something having girlfriend problems, or that the scene takes place on a children's playground, or that Catherine's partner looks to be right out of the academy herself. With each of these small details, Wainwright is very clearly trying to position Catherine as a sort of mother figure in this universe,  someone with a broader, wiser point of view who fights to help people, even dumb drunks who don't deserve her time.

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There's actually two more beats to the opening that we hear later. Chatting to her ex Richard later she relays how talking the boy down didn't work, because he was so drunk and clueless he was going to light a cigarette. "So I just foamed him."

Still later Catherine finds out the kid wants to charge her with assault for foaming him, while the store that she borrowed the fire extinguisher from is charging her 75 pounds for its use. 

Each of those beats reinforces the absurdism of this world. They also tell us something important about Catherine. She gets the job done, yes, and done well. But in the end she's usually shit on for it. There is no reward.

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Wainwright actually does something really interesting with the openings of each episode of HAPPY VALLEY. So I'm going to return to it tomorrow.  

In the meantime, one last thing to note about the opening: I don't know about you, but my favorite moment is the drunk listening to Catherine talk about her life and then wanting to know why her son won't speak to her. It's so completely off topic that it's intrinsically hilarious. It's a classic punch line in that way--a good joke always comes from where you're not looking.

And yet once you get far enough into the series, you also discover the question of why her son won't talk to her speaks to the core of Catherine's life in the series. 

Without suggesting it in any way, Wainwright has us thinking about the mystery and pain at the heart of HAPPY VALLEY on page one.

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Speaking of page one, if you're interested the BBC has made the pilot script available to download.