With her acerbic wit and no-nonsense attitude, Happy Valley’s Sergeant Catherine Cawood is clearly a force to be reckoned with.
So the image of her walking down the street pushing her elderly dog in a pram is quite the incongruous picture.
But that sight has often greeted the residents of the real Happy Valley, as star Sarah Lancashire strolls through the West Yorkshire town of Hebden Bridge where much of the show is set.
Kate Henderson, 45, is one of those who has made a life in Hebden. Her business The Tonic, which sells CBD products, is a stone’s throw from “Catherine’s house”, on Hangingroyd Lane.
From their base, a top floor studio in one of the town’s former mills, she has enjoyed a ringside seat for the filming.
She says: “It’s been really good fun. We felt a part of it and I think the actors liked being here too. We got used to seeing James Norton hanging around or seeing Sarah Lancashire pushing her gorgeous elderly dog around in a pram.
“This series has been brilliant, everyone’s watching it, the acting and writing are amazing. We all know how beautiful this valley is – now everyone else is getting to see it close up too.”
Everyone is barely an understatement. As the final series blazes towards its nail-biting finale, more than five million of us are well and truly hooked.
And people have also fallen in love with its West Yorkshire landscape.
Writer Sally Wainwright conceived the show as a tribute to her native Calder Valley and the locations are becoming hot spots for tourists.
The former mill town of Hebden Bridge is known for its independent spirit, sense of community and activism ever since hippies squatted in empty buildings in the 1970s.
These days, the valley is more Boden than beatnik – with locals joking that the characters would struggle to buy a property here now.
A two-bedroom terrace will set you back £150,000, with a family home like Catherine’s going for more than £350,000 and a farmhouse “on the tops” – the hills – costing £650,000.
But tourists and offcumdens (people moving in from other parts of the UK) still flock to enjoy the countryside and Hebden Bridge’s cultural connections.
The National Trust’s Hardcastle Crags is a favourite, as is pioneering music venue the Trades Club, and the town’s quirky shops and businesses.
Sylvia Plath is buried in Heptonstall, the hilltop village that looks down on the town, close to where we see Catherine visiting her daughter’s grave.
Teacher Sue Farmer, 53, has lived on Hangingroyd Lane for 20 years, a couple of doors away from Catherine’s place. She says locals have got used to having film crews – and fans – hanging around.
“It’s become normal,” she laughs. “At one point there were police cars outside. My daughter woke up and said, ‘What’s happening?’ We said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just Happy Valley.’
“We got quite used to seeing the actors around, you get a bit blasé, you’re thinking, ‘Oh, there goes Sarah Lancashire again’.”
She adds: “It’s a very friendly street, in the summer we sit outside and have a glass of wine like they do in the show. We get tourists coming along now trying to find the Happy Valley house.
“It’s hard to spot because they decorate it, then once filming is finished, they redecorate it back again.
“It’s lovely really. It’s such a brilliant show. Clare [Catherine’s sister] definitely seems like a Hebden Bridge person, you can picture her living here.”
While there is plenty of onscreen crime, how does the real area compare?
According to statistics, Hebden Royd (which includes Hebden Bridge) had 77 crimes per 1,000 people in 2021 – well under the West Yorkshire rate of 113.
So not quite the gangland murder and crime spot in the show. And it’s not put off people wanting to move there. Garry Horsfield, 65, who co-owns estate agents Peter David, says the “Happy Valley” effect is real – with potential buyers having their interest sparked by the show.
And he has direct experience of one of the locations – Catherine’s home – after selling it to the owner.
“Hebden Bridge was already on the map but the show has put the whole valley on the map, people are discovering the other areas,” he says.
Businesses are also used as sets. Oasis, the convenience store, doubles as the place where Clare’s partner, Neil Ackroyd, works. Sales assistant Pandora Lowther, 60, says they had a great laugh during filming.
“We had too much fun,” she smiles. “We got told off for making too much noise.
“They closed the shop to film but so far, there’s only been about 30 seconds of it on screen, I guess that’s TV.
“It’s not every day you get to see your workplace in a massive drama.”
Some of the most startling scenes have been between rogue pharmacist Faisal Bhatti and abused wife Joanne Hepworth. The pair meet because they are neighbours. Their properties are on an upmarket estate in Ripponden, close to private school Rishworth, where the Bhatti girls are dropped off.
As one resident told us, the streets here are usually quiet so during filming “it felt like a bit of a circus”.
She lives between the houses used as sets so admits to being glad when it was all over. “Don’t get me wrong, I love watching it – it’s very exciting,” she says. “But there were a lot of cars, they did a week at a time and took over really.”
When Joanna and Faisal need somewhere discreet to meet, they opt for a brew in a cafe.
In reality, it is cosy Shay Cafe, close to Halifax Football Club’s ground, a short walk from the train station. At the bottom of the appropriately named Hunger Hill, Turkish chef Riza Akcadag, 52, and wife Selda, 45, juggle the daily operation of the cafe with running another restaurant in the evening too.
Taking a break from rustling up hearty breakfasts, Riza tells us visitors have flocked to the cafe.
“People keep coming in because of Happy Valley,” he laughs. “It’s crazy really. There is a trail of places from the show, people like to look at them.”
One of the locations that fans have been puzzling over is Faisal’s pharmacy – the scene of his crimes and confrontation with the Knezevics criminal family.
The “shop” is a private house on a quiet side road in the market town of Elland. The flats where Catherine visits her friend Alison Garrs are on nearby Brooksbank Terrace.
Just a short drive away is one of the show’s most famous backdrops, Tuel Lane, a steep road topped by flats, leading to Sowerby Bridge, the town where Sally Wainwright spent her formative years.
Series three kicked off with Catherine’s colleagues radioing her for help from there – after someone dropped a microwave on to their patrol car.
When we visit, residents seem a little friendlier.
Dawn Whiteley, 59, lives a few miles away in Soyland, where some of the car chases were filmed. She says: “They went to a lot of trouble – taking gates off and they even moved a wall.”
Laughing, she adds: “I’ve not watched it yet, I must be the only person that hasn’t. I need to catch up before anyone tells me what happens.”
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