She finally said goodbye to her Calder Valley classic this year. But why did her star beg for the ending to be changed? And why is she so excited about menopausal punks?
Sally Wainwright is about to rock out on her new electric guitar. She has been learning to play as research for a new BBC drama she is writing. “It’s about a group of menopausal women who form a punk band and sing about their experiences,” she says, catching herself and, to my disappointment, popping the guitar back down in her home office (she keeps it by her desk). The renowned TV writer, who turned 60 this year, describes herself as a “bit of a recluse”. But she is clearly having a hoot with her punk era. “They realise they’ve got a lot to say as women of a certain age – they have a lot of anger.” She can’t stop grinning as she talks. “It’s very ‘feelgood’. I laugh just thinking about it.”
Guitar lesson aside, Wainwright is here to reflect on the final season of her hit drama Happy Valley, which brought 2023 in with a bang. Sarah Lancashire returned to our screens as Calder Valley’s ice-cool Sgt Catherine Cawood. Her grandson, Ryan (Rhys Connah), was now 16, and had reconnected with his incarcerated psychopath dad, Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton). This – along with her impending retirement, sibling tensions with her sister, Clare (Siobhan Finneran), and reports of aliens in Todmorden – drove Catherine to the edge once again. Supreme Sunday night television was back, and it was all everybody could talk about.
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