British TV’s most badass cop is a pissed-off grandma

polygon.com:

There’s a special pleasure to be had from watching a character who is just aggressively competent go about their job. It helps if they have a sharp tongue, a short fuse, and don’t suffer fools gladly. Oh, the vicarious release of watching them Figure It Out and Get Shit Done — running rings around fatuous bosses and sloppy miscreants as they do it. They’re like a knife, cutting through the complications of life.

That’s part of the appeal of Sgt. Catherine Cawood, a no-nonsense middle-aged policewoman in the Yorkshire Constabulary, and the star of the brilliant British police drama Happy Valley, the third and final season of which is currently airing on AMC Plus, BBC America, and Acorn TV. Cawood is not a hotshot detective, she’s just a hardworking copper: a veteran of the street who knows every inch, every face, and every sob story in her beat in the bleakly picturesque hills of West Yorkshire in the north of England. The other part of her appeal is that she is the hardened matriarch of a family near broken by tragedy, trying to hold it together by sheer force of will, but not always managing. In the end, some of life’s complications can’t be cut through.

Cawood is the creation of writer Sally Wainwright and her frequent collaborator, the actor Sarah Lancashire. Happy Valley debuted in 2014, had a second season in 2016, and then vanished for seven years while Wainwright developed her queer historical romp Gentleman Jack and concluded her family dramedy Last Tango in Halifax. (Like nearly all Wainwright’s work, these shows were both set in her native Yorkshire, too.) The long wait for the third season was excruciating. In the U.K., Happy Valley is essential, appointment viewing: When the series finale aired in the U.K.