Abstract
Reasoning that class identity is partly a matter of cultural allegiance, this chapter examines how viewing alignment with a fictional protagonist may call upon sympathies, attitudes and values comparable to those which underpin class affiliations. The possibilities of this are demonstrated through close analysis of the series Happy Valley (BBC 2014–) with a particular focus on the moral positioning of its central character, Catherine Cawood, and her role in policing the wider community of a ‘troubled town’. It also explores how this drama reworks one of the more powerful, traditional tropes of the detective story.
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Notes
- 1.
See Skeggs (1997: 127–8), who treats this as characteristic of the working class.
- 2.
Weatherill is caught and convicted; Fleming is murdered by Wadsworth, who ultimately kills himself.
- 3.
In 2013, Mick Philpott was found guilty of manslaughter for causing the deaths of his six children by arson, making him the subject of a typically generalising invective from the Daily Mail (see Dolan and Bentley, 2013). For an analysis of the media coverage of Karen Matthews’s role in the abduction of her daughter Shannon Matthews, see Jones (2012:13–38).
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Piper, H. (2017). Happy Valley: Compassion, Evil and Exploitation in an Ordinary ‘Trouble Town’. In: Forrest, D., Johnson, B. (eds) Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55506-9_13
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