Award-winning playwright Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley will be back for a second season. BBC One has renewed the dramatic series starring Sarah Lancashire for season two following its season one six-episode run in which 8 million viewers on average tuned in. Filming on season two will take place in 2015 with BBC One aiming for a 2015 premiere.
Announcing the renewal, RED Production Company’s founder and executive producer Nicola Shindler said, “Sally created a truly magnificent series with very real, complex characters, an engaging plot, and breathtaking storyline. I am delighted that we will be able to delve deeper into Catherine’s world in series two.”
“Sally Wainwright’s sensational series gripped the nation. Visceral, emotional and provocative from beginning to end, it was fantastic to see our audience on tenterhooks, begging for more,” added Charlotte Moore, Controller, BBC One. “The series is testimony to the creative ambition, quality, and breadth of original British drama on BBC One and I can’t wait for the second series to begin.”
The Plot of Season One:
Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) is the sergeant on duty when flustered and nervous accountant Kevin Weatherill (Steve Pemberton) comes into her West Yorkshire police station to report a crime. He’s reticent about the details and Kevin loses his nerve. The crime he was trying to report was Kevin’s own brain-child, a plot to kidnap his boss’s daughter and keep enough of the ransom to put his kids through private school.
And now local drug king-pin Ashley Cowgill (Joe Armstrong) has put the plan into action, and Kevin’s fantasy has become a grim and dangerous reality. The botched kidnapping of Ann Gallagher (Charlie Murphy) and its fallout unfolds…
Catherine is used to picking up the pieces of everyone else’s lives, but the hunt for Ann Gallagher will get right under her skin. Catherine becomes convinced that only by finding Ann alive and bringing her captors to justice can she avenge the death of her daughter.
