Happy Valleydoes a pretty good job at being plausible. When news broke that Sally Wainwright's cult BBC drama was returning for a third series - the first episode aired on New Year's Day - fans, who had been waiting nearly seven years for Sarah Lancashire's return as Yorkshire police office Catherine Cawood, rejoiced. The series, set in Yorkshire's Calder Valley - home of dry stone walls and rugged countryside - portrays the gritty underworld of the county in a way that's both compelling, and strikingly mundane. Words like 'manslaughter' and 'murder' are uttered in the same breath as 'cuppa tea?', all part of the Happy Valley charm. Which makes one scene in season three somewhat of an anomaly.
Rarely does Happy Valley veer into the fantastical, but we'd argue Tommy Lee Royce's (James Norton) prison haircut did just that. As he undergoes a makeover ahead of a trial date in Leeds, Tommy enlists the help of a fellow inmate - seemingly a convicted barber. In fact, according to The Guardian, this guy is a real-life barber called Gaz from Cutthroat Barbershop in Manchester. Gaz gets to work with a pair of clippers and in mere moments Tommy appears coiffed to the nines - bushy beard gone, long greasy lengths pruned into a short back and sides that wouldn't look out of place in a Charles Tyrwhitt campaign.
Why clippers? Inmates aren't allowed access to scissors or any other form of blade in prison, but according to the Prison Reform Trust electric hair trimmers, beard trimmers and nasal hair trimmers may be permitted at higher incentive levels.
So can you really achieve a haircut that sharp with a pair of clippers alone? 'Obviously there are a lot of extremely well-trained barbers out there who are very clever when it comes to using clippers for haircuts like that,' says Andreas Wild, stylist at Larry King, 'although as Tommy's hair looks extremely thick there, I'd say you're unlikely to achieve that sort of cut using clippers exclusively.' 'You'd have to texturise it and thin it out with thinning scissors,' he explains, 'it's also quite a soft haircut, another element that's difficult to achieve with hair clippers only, you'd need a razor. It's doable,' Andreas concedes, 'but I really don't think it would end up looking that perfect. I suspect the barber on site was allowed to reach for their scissors too.'
A gents haircut at Larry King's famed establishments will set you back at least £65, whereas Happy Valley's Tommy paid his inmate in tuna cans - clearly valuable tender on the inside, but a bargain if you ask us.