Valley of Gloom a bleak beauty

HAPPY New Year? Not in Happy Valley it’s not.

That title is TV’s greatest oxymoron since Celebrity Mastermind.

The brilliant BBC crime thriller is grimmer than Frankie Boyle’s bedtime fantasies. There’s domestic violence, drug gangs and, of course, jailed psycho-rapist Tommy Lee Royce.

His nemesis is sharp-tongued Sgt Catherine Cawood in her now fashionable XXL uniform.

Her spiky humour unsettles fellow officers. “I never know if she’s joking or just a pillock,” says a colleague trying to organise her retirement do. It’s probably why she’s never been promoted.