TV: Happy Valley: BBC Drama Series, 2014 Directed by Euros Lyn, Sally Wainwright and Tim Fywell

The script (Sally Wainwright) has some of the ingredients of a soap opera - a child born of rape, his mother committed a suicide, the grandparents have problems accepting and raising that child, the latter exhibiting some violent tendencies. The father of the child is a brutal criminal but has a soft spot for the child, etc.
On the other hand the series' plot revolves around an accountant, a looser-character reminiscent of the insurance salesman Lester from "Fargo." This, and some of the dialog help distinguish the series from a soap-crime series. The directors are quite good but they could have been more thrifty with the flashbacks. The flashbacks, in their case, are just illustrations of what is going on in the character's mind, which is always a symptom of helplessness to express a psychological process in alternative ways. In other words, the viewer should be able to deduce what is going on in the character's mind via different, purely dramatic, subtle devices.
Good performances by Sarah Lancashire and Steve Pemberton.