Jamie Lee Curtis is a big fan of BBC drama ‘Happy Valley’.
Jamie Lee Curtis is a big fan of BBC drama Happy Valley
The Academy Award-winning actress has heaped praise on Sarah Lancashire and the show’s creator and writer Sally Wainwright for their “gorgeous portrait” of an “amazing woman” in former ‘Coronation Street’ star Sarah’s character Sergeant Catherine Cawood.
She wrote on Twitter: “Just finished @happyvalleybbc THANK YOU @SarahLancsUK @sallywainwrigh8 for a gorgeous portrait of an amazing woman.”
The BBC One drama finished after three series over nine years in February, with 7.5 million fans tuning in to see Catherine and villain Tommy Lee Royce’s final showdown.
The show has proved so popular in the UK, it is to be taught as part of a university TV writing course.
Professor Ann Marie Di Mambro from Glasgow’s Caledonian University is planning to use Sally’s show in lectures for the MA in TV Fiction Writing course, as she says it broke so many rules of television script writing.
She previously told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “It’s the perfect marriage of brilliant perfect casting. It’s so deeply, deeply emotional. It’s raw from start to finish.
“It goes against a lot of what we teach – that’s what is so wonderful about it. The penultimate episode ends with a phone call between two people (Tommy Lee Royce and son Ryan.)
“You tend to teach people not to over-write the dialogue. Phone calls can be quite dull.
“Don’t have scenes that are too long, but because it’s so unique and so original (it works.)
“I would imagine that it’s written from the heart and these are characters that the writer really believes in, who are so flawed.”