I DIDN’T notice the cast of Happy Valley mumbling in the first couple of episodes.

I was more interested in how it was possible to make something so relentlessly grim impossible to turn over.

It reminded me a lot of the Netflix hit series Orange is the New Black, to which we have become belatedly addicted in our house.

By “We”, I mean my husband and I. It certainly isn’t PG.

We have to wait at least an hour and a half after our nine-year-old has gone up to bed - just in case she decides to trot downstairs with a last minute request mid episode.

Pretty much none of the prison-drama is child-friendly.

And neither is any of Happy Valley. It is about murder and revenge and I don’t think Sarah Lancashire smiled once, either in the first series’ six episodes or in the first two of the second.

Mind you, her daughter is dead, the man who raped her is stalking her family and she is being accused of a series of grisly murders.

I guess there’s not much there to be that happy about. Or speak up for.

Maybe this is why there was all that mumbling a lot of viewers were moaning about - it wasn’t a sound issue but “gritty realism.”

Happy Valley does have a lot of very, very dark humour in there which is why it reminds me of Orange is the new Black.

Life is not much better for its central character Piper who finds herself trying to survive an unexpected jail sentence.

But I think after all this pitch-black entertainment I need to find something a bit jollier to watch this week.