This compelling and addictive police drama stars Sarah Lancashire as the middle-aged Yorkshire police sergeant Catherine Cawood, who struggles daily between remembering the suicide of her teenage daughter and developing love for the young boy her daughter left behind. Divorced and estranged from her son partly because of that tragic death, Catherine is determined to capture her daughter’s lover/killer/rapist, but the search almost spirals out of control when the perpetrator, Tommy Lee Royce (played by James Norton) is released from prison. Her pursuit of Tommy Lee Royce becomes an obsession.
A popular BBC production distributed by Netflix on August 20, Happy Valley consists of six episodes, which do not involve any hunting for clues, since we know the heinous nature of the crime from the first episode. But the characters are so sharply drawn and the situation so suspenseful that binge viewing is the way to go. . The proliferation of drugs, corruption of government, and police complicity are part of the problems she faces every day.
Cawood is the type of woman we rarely see on television: self-aware at times, unbelievably vulnerable and foolish also. Occasionally, she is just out of control–both emotionally and physically–and recklessly puts herself in danger. 
“Happy Valley”, like “The Fall” (also from the U.K. and distributed exclusively through Netflix) as well as The Killing and The Bridge (American adaptations of two Scandinavian shows)—not to mention the mother of them all, Prime Suspect—suggests just how much a thriller can be designed focusing on a woman police officer, who is damaged but tenacious in accomplishing what she needs to. Season Two of this highly unusual drama is being produced now and scheduled for US release in January 2015.