As previously announced, James Norton and Siobhan Finneran will also return for series three - as Catherine’s nemesis, the murderer and sex offender Tommy Lee Royce, and Catherine’s sister, the recovering addict Clare Cartwright, respectively.
Announced today, Con O’Neill will reprise his role as Clare’s recovering alcoholic boyfriend Neil Ackroyd. George Costigan will return as Nevison Gallagher, with Charlie Murphy as his daughter and Catherine’s police colleague Ann. They will be joined by other Happy Valley returning favourites including Derek Riddell as Richard Cawood, Karl Davies as Daniel Cawood, Susan Lynch as Alison Garrs, Rick Warden as Mike Taylor, Vincent Franklin as Andy Shepherd and Rhys Connah as Catherine’s grandson Ryan Cawood.
Amit Shah (The Other One, The Long Call), Mark Stanley (The Girl Before, White House Farm) and Mollie Winnard (All Creatures Great And Small, Four Lives) join the cast for series three, and will play pivotal roles in Happy Valley’s final chapter.
When Catherine discovers the remains of a gangland murder victim in a drained reservoir it sparks a chain of events that unwittingly leads her straight back to Tommy Lee Royce. Her grandson Ryan is now 16 and still living with Catherine, but he has ideas of his own about what kind of relationship he wants to have with the man Catherine refuses to acknowledge as his father. Still battling the seemingly never-ending problem of drugs in the valley and those who supply them, Catherine is on the cusp of retirement.
The first time David Hyde Pierce watched Sarah Lancashire play Julia Child, she prepared him a meal. The cameras rolled as she cracked eggs in both hands at once. She turned an omelet over with one flip, then slid it onto a plate without a utensil in sight. She garnished the dish with parsley as if it were her millionth try. Director Charles McDougall yelled “cut!” with Pierce sitting across from her, and he said aloud, if only to himself, “Oh, my.” He had chills. “She transformed in front of his eyes. He felt her greatness,” Julia creator Daniel Goldfarb recalls. As Pierce puts it now, “It was like she’d been doing it all her life.”
like very seriously after years of difficult, tragic roles, Catherine Cawood perhaps being the hardest of all, it’s an absolute delightto see Sarah Lancashire playing a character who has so much joie de vivre. I hope Julia was as fun to film as it looks like it’s going to be to watch.
There’s some truth that roles for older women are harder to come by, but it’s wrong for actors to monopolise the ageist thing. In every profession you reach an age where people look at you suspiciously. Accountants, bankers, teachers are all pushed aside. [x]
Love is love. It doesn’t matter about sexuality, it’s just about how you feel towards somebody else and being good and honest with them. - Sarah Lancashire
