Why I'll be mourning the end of Happy Valley, says Christa Ackroyd

This is no cringeworthy pastiche of Yorkshire life with it’s northern stereotypes and unbelievable mock ‘somewhere up North ‘ accents that have me reaching for the off button.

This is us, whether we like it or not. It is written by someone who knows us, someone who cares about us. And someone who gets us, warts and all. And that is its stomach churning power.

Have you ever known an hour pass so fast? Have you ever laughed out loud and then hidden behind a cushion almost in the same moment? Have you ever seen people you know so perfectly portrayed? It is so tense you cannot tear your gaze from it and then in the blink of an eye it is over until the next week. It is television as it used to be. A must watch, week in week out, building to a conclusion we think we know and probably don’t.

No binge watching available unless, like so many, you were late to the party and watched series one and two in preparation for its denouement.

Slowly it builds until it is almost unbearable and then it’s over for another week, a week in which you talk about it, you analyse it, you think about it, you share your thought on it. You dwell on it. And tomorrow it ends for ever. It’s just how it ends that has kept us on our seats this past decade.

So why is it so, so brilliant and yet so disturbing at the same time, particularly for those of us who live, as I do, in the very heart of where it is filmed? I know ever street, every road, every building used. But Happy Valley is not just a case of location spotting.

Its genius is it looks like us, it sounds like us and it is about us.

It is about the best of us, the stoicism and the sometime cynical understated natural wit of the people who live here. And it is about the very worst of us, the sub culture, the dark underbelly which exists particularly in the world of drugs that we may pretend isn’t happening, but we all know is right here on our doorstep in every northern town or city. Or anywhere for that matter. One which we have to educate our children about and just hope and pray they never get mixed up in.

I don’t think a TV drama has ever felt so real.

Never before has its dialogue made our stomachs flip and twist in knots until it verges on unbearable. Sally Wainwright deserves the freedom of Halifax and Sarah Lancashire every award and accolade that will come her way, but then so too do the whole cast. I haven’t heard one person who doesn’t agree with me. Well actually I tell a lie, I have . One person said they weren’t watching it because not enough happens. I really didn’t know what to say to that. Any more and my head would explode.

The decision that tomorrow is the end is a writer at the top of her game, leaving us breathlessly wanting more while knowing we will never have it .. but then what writer would have waited seven years in real time to see the actor who plays Ryan grow up to be old enough to explore the complex and totally understandable relationship he seeks with his murderous father. Only Sally Wainwright, whose casting is perfection as well as her writing. James Norton is disturbingly handsome and staggeringly evil at one and the same time.

And for those who think he is simply exaggerating the northern vowels discovered during his school days in Yorkshire he most certainly is not. Norton was educated in rural North Yorkshire at one of the poshest boarding schools in the land. This is not even West Riding speak he has perfected. It is Halifax and that level of nuance is staggering. Maybe he should be the next Bond after all... he is that good. Or in this case that bad.

The relationship between Catherine and Clare is genuine. The acting so sublime you never watch it and think how good it is, only in retrospect. Sisters they are not but Sarah Lancashire and Siobhan Finneran behave and act like sisters because they have known each other and been friends for 30 years. And because they are both brilliant. The scene in the cafe (and if you haven’t watched it why not?) was the most tense, perfect example of understated writing and acting I have ever seen. It should be shown to every budding actor or writer for years to come. Oh my goodness was there ever anything so indescribably uncomfortable and so utterly compelling? As for the line about the stew.. !

And tomorrow it is over. For good.

No more Sgt Catherine Cawood, no more Tommy Lee Royce, no more unhappiness in, as the title track sings, the troubled world of Happy Valley and I will be bereft. It will be like finishing a book you never want to end and one which makes all others afterwards pale into insignificance.

And if you haven’t seen it as millions of us have, if you have not experienced its depth, its cynicism, its natural wit and its power then I envy you. Because for you you can turn on your TV and watch all 18 glorious episodes for the first time. Which, quite frankly, I am about to do all over again.

What will happen tomorrow I do not know. Sally Wainwright has cleverly recorded five separate endings so the actors themselves did not know as the drama played out. That’s how to create tension in a cast. I know what I want to happen. I know I want good to triumph over evil.

And I want Catherine to drive off into the sunset in her battered old Landrover on new adventures we can only imagine and will never know. Because she deserves it. She is a female warrior in a world where female warriors have to battle hard. She has seen too much, experienced too much, not to have almost been taken to the edge of destruction. And yet she has survived. Please, please may she survive tomorrow. And don’t anyone tell me it’s just a drama.

I have met too many Catherines, too many survivors along the way who have battled the same and done just that. But we wait and see. So nobody ring me. Nobody talk to me tomorrow evening. I have waited ten years for this and I almost can’t cope. That’s how superb it has been. The End.