In excess

Judging from its website, Hebden Bridge’s tourist office considers the fact that BBC1’s Happy Valley is filmed in the town something of a selling point. Personally, I can’t see why. (Perhaps points of especial tourist interest might include the cellar where Sergeant Catherine Cawood was almost battered to death, or the caravan site where drug dealers fed heroin to the teenage girl they’d kidnapped and raped.) And now that it’s back for a second series, viewers of Sally Wainwright’s Bafta-winning drama are still unlikely to confuse Hebden Bridge with, say, Chipping Norton.

In Tuesday’s opening scene Catherine (Sarah Lancashire) filled in her sister on the events of her day. ‘Three lads out of their head on acid,’ she chuckled wearily, stole a sheep from a local farm, and, after it was mauled by the dogs on the housing estate, she had to finish it off with a rock to the head.