>> I dont get this fondness for Happy Valley. Its a depressing, dark, miserable series with
>> little in the way of interest or excitement. Ok you can say "gritty" but its
>> not for me.
Between us we have lived in Elland, Halifax, Huddersfield and Brighouse and we have great fun spotting locations that we are very familiar with. Sally Wainwright is from Sowerby Bridge and the dialogue is absolutely spot on, you could learn vernacular West Riding from this programme. It's far better in this respect than the usual Yorkshire stereotypes speaking with a non-existent all-purpose northern accent that usually turn up in TV and film drama (including "Summer Wine"). There's a lot of humour in Happy Valley too, which perhaps goes over the head over those not tuned in to it.
Sarah Lancashire is also noticeably better at the accent and dialect than e.g. Derek Jacobi, Ann Reid and Nicola Walker in Last Tango despite the fact that she (Lancashire) is actually from Oldham.
There were complaints about the sound quality of the earlier series of HV, which the BBC blamed on the accent/dialect. Despite that they seem to have fixed it...
I can see why you might not enjoy it. I did in fact say "gritty!" when I watched the first episode of this series.
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