Siobhan Finneran plays women who have been let down, mostly by themselves, and does it without asking for our pity. In Happy Valley she is the warmth beside Sarah Lancashire's grief, and the series would be colder and less true without her.
Fi1m perspective
Siobhan Finneran's first instinct is to listen. In Happy Valley (2014) her Clare Cartwright is the sister of Sarah Lancashire's Catherine Cawood, and in their scenes together Catherine talks and Clare watches, waits, and answers half a beat late, as if checking the sentence for damage before she lets it out. Clare is in recovery, she has made a mess of her life, and she has been trusted with a child, and Finneran plays her as quietly astonished by that trust every day it continues. It is the warmth of the series, and it is not soft. We found ourselves more anxious for Clare than for anyone the plot was actually threatening, because Finneran lets us see what an ordinary evening costs a woman who knows how easily it could all go back.
It took a long time to get there. She began as Rita in Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987), then spent the best part of two decades in guest parts, Coronation Street (1989–1990) and Clocking Off (2000–2002) among them. The regular work arrived when she was past 40, and it arrived twice at once: Janice Garvey in Benidorm (2007–2015), a sitcom, and Sarah O'Brien, the scheming lady's maid in Downton Abbey (2010–2012), a period drama, with the two overlapping in her diary. "I hit 40, and started to pick up regular characters," she has said, and she is right that this is the wrong way round. Most actors get the regular characters first and the interesting ones later, if at all.
What those two roles have in common is a woman who has decided what she thinks of everyone around her and is keeping most of it to herself. Played fast, that is comedy; played slow, it is O'Brien. Finneran can do either, and the point is not that she can do both but that they are the same performance at different speeds. Sally Wainwright, who has now worked with her four times, understood this, and gave her in Clare a woman who has stopped trusting her own opinions and is only starting to form them again. The pairing with Lancashire, three projects so far, is the best thing that has happened to her on screen: two Northern women who do not need to explain themselves to each other, which means we are trusted to keep up.
Protection (2025) puts her name at the top of the bill for the first time, as DI Liz Nyles, after nearly forty years of being the second or third name down. It is too early for us to say whether it works. The question it raises is whether a lead can use what she does best, which is to watch other people, or whether it will ask her to be watched instead. Start with Happy Valley, where she is the warmth Catherine comes home to, and see whether you notice what she is doing. You probably will not, the first time, which is the compliment.
Biography
Siobhan Finneran is an English actress. She made her screen debut in the 1987 film Rita, Sue and Bob Too and appeared in early television roles including Coronation Street (1989–1990) and Clocking Off (2000–2002). She originated a lead role in the stage play On the Shore of the Wide World in 2005.
Finneran is known for playing Sarah O'Brien in Downton Abbey (2010–2012), Janice Garvey in Benidorm (2007–2015) and Clare Cartwright in Happy Valley (2014–2023). Other credits include Boy A (2007), The Selfish Giant (2013), The Stranger (2020) and Time (2021). She received a British Academy Television Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Happy Valley.
