![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The climactic scene in Catherine’s home, between our no-nonsense, Taser-wielding heroine and a wounded Tommy (brilliant James Norton), was all you could wish for. Nor was I happy, earlier in the series, with Tommy Lee Royce being able to escape from a courtroom, clambering over a glass-walled dock like a Yorkshire Spider-Man. ‘This finale screamed out to be a double episode’: Sarah Lancashire as Catherine Cawood in the last ever Happy Valley. No thrilling, clammy sense of a net closing in, as in the previous two series. No tense police showdowns with the wife-battering gym teacher or the jittery pharmacist. As did Catherine’s last-minute aside, back at the station, linking the pharmacist to the drugs and the murder. The scene involving Sgt Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire), ex-con Alison (Susan Lynch) and some diazepam felt very pat. At the risk of being a buzzkill (for anyone yet to catch up: spoilers ahead!), some elements seemed a tad rushed and scrappy. So much for all the wild fan theories about the long-awaited final episode of Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley (BBC One). Everett goes full Alastair Sim with his flamboyant, magnificently ruined agent – even his hair looks moth-eaten. Funny Woman’s strength lies in its repertory-style ensemble energy. It’s easy to like Sophie, played with nuclear-strength moxie by Arterton, but even allowing for the times, there’s no buying into the central conceit of her as a raw, trailblazing comic talent – however much everyone around her keeps hammily insisting so. “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he sighs. Elsewhere, the show deals with everything from race, sexuality and chauvinism to acid trips, improvisational comedy and Sophie’s romance with a castmate smoothie played by Tom Bateman. The flatlet Sophie shares with shopgirl friend Marj (Alexa Davies) is a single-girl sinkpit of knickers simmering in pans and drying stockings. There’s music (the Byrds, the Kinks) a screen that keeps chopping itself into groovy rectangles. Rupert Everett goes full Alastair Sim with his flamboyant, magnificently ruined agent – even his hair looks moth-eatenįunny Woman doesn’t stint on period detail. The newly christened Sophie Straw finds agents (Rupert Everett and Banks) and bags a part in a television sitcom controlled by a smitten producer (Arsher Ali). Struggles and traumas ensue: working in a snooty department store fan dancing sexual assault on a date (“Kick him in the cock!” someone yells). Based on the 2014 Nick Hornby novel Funny Girl, it stars Gemma Arterton as Barbara, a Blackpool Belle beauty queen who tosses aside her tiara and waves goodbye to her father and aunt (David Threlfall and Rosie Cavaliero) to move to swinging 60s London in the hope of becoming the UK’s Lucille Ball. Now there’s Sky’s six-part Funny Woman, written by Morwenna Banks and directed by Oliver Parker. ![]()
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