How Happy Valley depicts the spectrum of male violence in all its terrifying glory

This article contains descriptions of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and rape. 

Happy Valley season three spoilers ahead. 

“I saw that coming,” said no one watching Happy Valley, ever. 

Take Joanna Hepworth, whose husband – Rob Hepworth, a local P.E. teacher – controls, rapes, and tortures her – seemingly for the sheer love of it. We’re lured into thinking we know the script: she’ll be murdered by her husband, or she’ll murder her husband as the only way to escape his abuse, inevitably going to prison. But instead, she’s attacked by another man, her local pharmacist. 

The threat of male violence lurks on Joanna's periphery, but it only comes into full view when it's too late. In this way, the show's writer, Sally Wainwright, brilliantly depicts the brutal reality of violence against women. 

Across all three seasons of Happy Valley, Tommy Lee Royce has embodied a pure, unadulterated form of misogyny, reflected through his obvious enjoyment when – in season one alone – he kidnaps and rapes Ann Gallagher, murders PC Kirsten McAskill and kicks the living daylights out of Sergeant Catherine Cawood. A personification of every woman's worst nightmare, his character resembles the threat of male violence in its most unconcealed form. 

And yet somehow, Tommy Lee Royce isn't even the scariest character – not by a mile. That honour belongs to the humdrum family men who populate the sub-plots of each season. Operating under a glossy sheen of respectability – fancy jobs, happy families, and suburban houses – these characters represent a more covert, but no-less-extreme, threat towards the women in their lives. 

The first season of Happy Valley introduces us to Kevin Weatherill, an accountant who is a family man (despite getting agitated with his wife occasionally). Except when he needs an injection of cash to pay for his daughter's schooling – and the traditional route of asking for a raise fails – he enlists the help of violent men to kidnap and ransom a young woman, leading to her being repeatedly assaulted, raped, and left to endure a life of post-traumatic stress syndrome. 

In the second season, we meet John Wadsworth, a police officer who isn’t particularly nice to his wife. But he has a respectable job and to all extents and purposes, is a family man. 

But when the woman he’s been having an affair with starts blackmailing him, he strangles her, mutilates her vagina with a broken bottle, and burns her apartment – all to avoid his colleagues seeing photos of him in lingerie. When he thinks he’s gotten away with it, he celebrates by invoking a litany of gender-based insults – slut, whore, slapper – against his wife. I cheered when he jumped off that bridge. 

And finally to the third (and final) season, in which we meet Faisal Bhatti; a pharmacist with all the markers of traditional respectability: a good job, a nice family, and a nice house. When his lucrative side business – dealing drugs – blows up in his face, he becomes increasingly violent towards Joanna Hepworth, a vulnerable woman with whom he’s been having an affair. 

“Although Tommy Lee Royce is terrifying, the way Wainwright writes secondary characters – like Kevin, John, and Faisal – reflects a prescient understanding of the most common manifestation of male violence against women.”

When she threatens to expose his illegal dealings to the police, Faisal smacks her in the face with a rolling pin, inserts a lethal injection of air into her bloodstream, and being stuffs her dead body into a suitcase. Faisal murders Joanna, safe in the knowledge that his covert violence towards her will surely be eclipsed by the brazenly incriminating violence of her husband, Rob Hepworth. In the spectrum of male violence, his actions recede back into the periphery.

Although figures like Tommy Lee Royce are overtly terrifying, the way Wainwright writes secondary characters – like Kevin, John, and Faisal – reflects a prescient understanding of the most common manifestation of male violence against women. 

While stranger attacks garner the most publicity, the majority of violence against women is inflicted by someone they know. It's estimated that more than 640 million women worldwide (aged 15+) have been subjected to intimate partner violence, while almost one in four adolescent girls aged 15–19 (who were already in a relationship) have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner or husband (via UN Women). 

The temptation with TV dramas is to present characters like Tommy Lee Royce in isolation – as a sole –albeit serious – threat to womankind. But part of Wainwright's genius is the inclusion of this volatile threat in addition to the more pervasive perpetrators of violence against women in our society. The accounts, police officers, pharmacists, and P.E. teachers. And for the purpose of drama alone, isn’t that rather more scary? 

As well as exploring the spectrum of male violence against women, Wainwright also extracts loving moments of tenderness, empathy, and vulnerability from her male characters. See Ryan and Daniel Cawood's unlikely brotherhood; Richard Cawood finally apologising to Catherine after abandoning her when their daughter, Becky, died; and Nevison Gallagher choking back tears as he reminds his daughter, Ann Gallagher, that he loves her, as she tries and tries to process her PTSD. 

Wainwright has created a vivid picture of the real threat to women's safety, but she's also outlined the tentative steps that men can take towards becoming part of the solution. 

For more information about emotional abuse and domestic violence, you can call The Freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge on 0808 2000 247. 

For more information about reporting and recovering from rape and sexual abuse, you can contact Rape Crisis.

If you have been sexually assaulted, you can find your nearest Sexual Assault Referral Centre here. You can also find support at your local GP, voluntary organisations such as Rape Crisis, Women's Aid, and Victim Support, and you can report it to the police (if you choose) here.

For more from Glamour UK's Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.

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