Sally Wainwright gives women’s work, anger and family troubles the time they deserve. We rate her highly for dialogue that finds humour in difficult lives, though she sometimes explains what her actors have already made clear.
Fi1m perspective
In Happy Valley (2014), Sarah Lancashire’s Catherine Cawood has police work to do while her family lives with grief. Sally Wainwright keeps both demands in view, and the crime drama is better for it. We were moved by Catherine’s determination to carry on with the job, because the writing never suggests that getting through a shift settles anything at home. The kidnapping depends on a conspicuous coincidence involving Tommy Lee Royce, but the consequences for the people caught up in it are frighteningly convincing.
Writing for Coronation Street came before her first original series, At Home with the Braithwaites (2000). There were setbacks before Unforgiven (2009) brought a breakthrough. The late-life romance of Last Tango in Halifax (2012) followed, before the crime drama of Happy Valley. Across her work, people speak plainly and use humour even when there is little to laugh about.
In Gentleman Jack (2019), that ear for speech makes the period courtship feel immediate. Suranne Jones gives Anne Lister briskness and wit, while Sophie Rundle’s Ann Walker makes answering her seem both tempting and difficult. Wainwright allows awkwardness into their exchanges, and makes the hesitant replies count as much as the confident ones. The storytelling wanders, though, and she is too ready to enjoy Lister’s certainty without examining what it means for a landowner to expect her own way.
In Riot Women (2025), five middle-aged women form a punk band, with menopause and caring responsibilities still demanding attention. Joanna Scanlan and Rosalie Craig make those frustrations matter, and Wainwright and fellow director Amanda Brotchie keep the humour and distress moving together. The jokes let the women be irritated without turning them into objects of ridicule. But some conversations become lectures, and the thinly written men leave the women with too little worth arguing against.
We rate her most when she gives people room to be difficult without explaining who deserves our sympathy. Her performers can usually tell us that unaided. Start with Happy Valley; the coincidence is worth forgiving for Catherine Cawood.
Biography
Sally Wainwright is an English television writer, producer and director. Born in 1963 in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, she began her career writing for the radio serial The Archers and the soap operas Emmerdale and Coronation Street in the 1990s.
Her first original drama series was At Home with the Braithwaites (2000–2003). She is known for creating and writing Scott & Bailey (2011–2016), Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020), Happy Valley (2014–2023) and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022), many of which are set in Yorkshire and feature female leads. Wainwright has also directed episodes of several of her series. She wrote and directed the 2025 series Riot Women.
Wainwright was appointed OBE in 2020 for services to writing and television. Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley each won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Drama Series.
