On Duty

You mean work in pairs? That's something that has gone back and forth over the years, depending on the people at the top.

I used to prefer working on my own - I couldn't stand the thought of a whole shift with someone who was boring, or lazy, or a liability. Then a policy came in that at certain times (Health and Safety was quoted)officers would always work in pairs. This suited a lot of people I knew who were, to put it bluntly, afraid to work on their own, especially somewhere remote (where I worked was similar to Happy Valley - what wasn't made clear in the series was that in a place like that, help could be 20-30 minutes away, a very long time if you're trying to hold someone down whilst surrounded by a restless crowd)

The latest thinking, I believe, is that mobile patrols should be single manned (pardon the dinosaur language). The government wants as many vehicles on the road as possible, to give the impression that there are more officers around than there actually are! Genius! (It's the same principle as those cardboard cut-outs of officers you see in supermarkets).

The dour, desperately unhappy characters feel real, appropriate in the world of this series but really I'm not asking for comic relief characters. Grantchester,Hinterland,Vera all play off the gloomy climate and out of the way, decayed feeling of place.That shouldn't preclude humor in their interactions. Sopranos, Deadwood, True Detective S1, Fargo, Dexter all have a tremendous amount of humour. It's human, organic and appropriate too. The UK shows I list I've enjoyed to some degree but I do not rewatch any of them. There's something exotic for me seeing these UK shows. I do not watch Hannibal, Bates Motel, Criminal Minds beyond sampling despite good, reasoned reviews.I gotta have some laughs with my miserable characters or its just a sense of unpleasantness. There's nothing instructive except "Dont do that."