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Main Characters
Catherine
Sergeant Catherine Cawood
Played By: Sarah Lancashire
- Action Girl: She has her moments, and isn't afraid to wade right into danger.
- Big Damn Heroes: In Series 1, when she fights off Tommy, rescues Ann from the cellar and manages to get her to the safety of the police car before collapsing from her wounds.
- Broken Bird: More obvious at some moments than others.
- Brought Down to Badass: She used to be a detective with the Major Incident Team, before her daughter's suicide caused her to have a breakdown and she was subsequently demoted. Now she's just the best uniformed copper around, with a medal from the Queen to prove it.
- Cowboy Cop: Sgt. Cawood has streaks of this. A notable example is when she refuses a direct order to wait for backup, and pursues a drug dealers van on foot, smashing a window with her baton before they escape.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: She is the "responsible" to her sister, Clare's, "foolish", although she can behave impulsively and hotheadedly at times.
- Lantern Jaw of Justice: Distaff Counterpart edition, complete with cleft chin.
- Mama Bear: Hurt Ryan in front of her (although he's technically her grandson) and she'll hunt you down.
- Mrs Exposition: Catherine in the series opening scene, when she attempts to establish contact with a suicidal man threatening to set himself on fire.Sgt. Catherine Cawood: "I'm Catherine, by the way. I'm 47, I'm divorced, I live with my sister who's a recovering heroin addict. I've two grown up children, one dead, one who don't speak to me and a grandson."
- My Greatest Failure: Catherine feels this way about being unable to stop her daughter's suicide after she was raped by Tommy.
- Near-Death Experience: After being brutally attacked by Royce, Catherine hallucinates seeing her daughter, as an innocent child rather than as the suspended corpse she has been hallucinating all of Series 1, beckoning her to follow her into the light.
- Never Mess with Granny: Catherine can hold her own at times.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Catherine, who is usually tough and not very emotional, breaks down in tears at her alcoholic sisters feet after Clare starts drinking again and begins acting belligerent.
- Parental Substitute:
- To Kirsten McAskill. It's subtle in their interactions, but hinted at strongly by McAskill's husband in how distraught he says she was after Cawood dressed her down in their final conversation. Ironically, the same relationship between the women works as Like a Daughter to Me on Cawood's side, with McAskill as a surrogate daughter.
- Possibly also at work in Series 2 between Cawood and Ann Gallagher, who has just lost her mother. By Series 3, Ann marries her son Daniel, making Catherine her mother-in-law.
- She is also the closest thing her grandson, Ryan, has to a mother.
- Sanity Slippage: Catherine has moments of this, hallucinating her daughter's body a couple of times. She does eventually find peace by the end of the series.
- Therapy Is for the Weak: Catherine definitely takes this view. She refused therapy even after her daughter died, and only agrees to see a police therapist in this series as the only other option given to her is mandatory medical retirement.
Clare
Clare Cartwright
Played By: Siobhan Finneran
- The Alcoholic: With the obligatory backslide in series 2.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: She is the "foolish" to her police officer sister, Catherine's, "responsible."
- Recovered Addict: Until she backslides in Series 2.
Tommy
Tommy Lee Royce
Played By: James Norton
- Beware the Quiet Ones: He initially appears as an underling to Ashley who speaks very little, but he's easily the most ruthless and vicious criminal in the series.
- Big Bad: Although he's not entirely competent, he's the most recurring nemesis to Catherine in the series.
- Cop Killer: He murders Kirsten McAskill in cold blood.
- Did Not Think This Through: Given his impulsive nature, he does not consider that trying to kill Catherine and burn her grandson alive, and continuing to harass them from prison—where all his contacts are logged and later investigated—is not going to end well.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: After she's dead, anyway. Before that, he beat her up. Mostly it rolls into his internal narrative about life, and Catherine Cawood in particular, being out to get him.
- Never My Fault: He twists everything he has ever done as being someone else's fault, an act of self-defense or Not What It Looks Like. In their final confrontation, Catherine Lamp Shades this and makes it absolutely clear that he's a monster.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Whenever he gets in a fight, he tends to keep beating his opponent long after the fight itself is over.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: His masterful disguise consists of reading glasses, a beanie hat and a copy of War and Peace. It works, though. During a prison escape, his well-groomed, well-dressed appearance and shouting "police" is enough to get people out of his away and out of the courthouse. It's then subverted as he immediately changes into completely different clothes provided by his cohorts and escapes the city disguised as a bicycle messenger.
- Psychopathic Manchild: He's incredibly dangerous, but also lazy, impulsive and immature.
- Psychopath with Three Names: Tommy Lee Royce has three names and is a sociopathic rapist and murderer.
- Redemption Equals Death: He seems to think so but Catherine makes it clear that she doesn't see Tommy as someone redeemable. After escaping custody, he breaks into Catherine's home intending to kill her and burn the place down. After seeing Ryan's room and looking through their photo albums, he comes to realize that Catherine was there for Ryan and she was the parent that he needed. In their final confrontation, he gives her a dying declaration that takes down the head of the Halifax Mafia, then sets himself on fire. He later dies in the hospital.
- The Sociopath: Tommy is a ruthless monster and unrepentant sadist. He kills without a second thought, acts on impulse and thinks of other people only in relation to himself.
- We learn at the end of Series 2 that he has a slew of fiancées, any number of whom he may have groomed to interfere with Ryan's safety.
- Would Hit a Girl: Being a Serial Rapist, he has no problem beating women and his sadistic tendencies mean he actually enjoys it.
- Would Hurt a Child: He tries to murder his own young son. He later tries to groom him but fails.
Ann
Ann Gallagher
Played By: Charlie Murphy
- Bound and Gagged: For much of Series 1.
- Break the Haughty: Series 1 only. She's a spoiled, not very nice rich girl, but being kidnapped, raped, and drugged made her a much kinder and more badass person.
- Damsel in Distress: She spends most of the first series like this. Subverted when Catherine partially frees her before being attacked by Tommy. Ann frees herself and knocks Tommy off Catherine and helps drag her away to safety.
- Fair Cop: In Series 2 and 3.
- Happily Married: To Daniel Cawood by Series 3 during the Time Skip, making Catherine her mother-in-law.
- Hero Worship: Subtext in her relationship with Sgt. Cawood until the night she gets drunk, when she literally compares her boss to God. She's far more mortified about that the next morning than she is about needing Plan B.
- Following in Their Rescuer's Footsteps: After being rescued by Catherine in Series 1, she is inspired to become a police officer.
- Took a Level in Badass: Originally a privileged rich girl, she reveals deep reserves of strength and eventually becomes a Police Community Support Officer with an eye toward becoming a detective in later life. By the middle of Series 3, she achieves her goal of becoming a Detective and joins CID.
- Trauma Conga Line: Ann goes through an obscene amount of punishment. She's kidnapped, raped and forcibly injected with low-grade heroin to keep her docile. Not to mention all the mental anguish she goes through.
Nevison
Nevison Gallagher
Played By: George Costigan
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: After Kevin arranges the kidnapping of his daughter, Nevison offers to personally pay for the schooling of his daughter's and give Kevin the fair shake he felt he never got by leaving him in charge of the company....while Nevison spends time with his dying wife.
Kevin
Kevin Stephen Weatherhill
Played By: Steve Pemberton
- Beware the Quiet Ones
- Did Not Think This Through: He clearly did not consider all the consequences of arranging Ann's kidnapping, nor what a couple of violent kidnappers would do. Not only does he get caught and end up in prison, but his wife and children have to leave their home due to threats and harassment.
- Never My Fault: Although he initially feels immense guilt about the scheme he concocts, his imprisonment causes him to sink into denial. He shirks all responsibility and blames everyone but himself. He blames his wife for "encouraging" him, even though he was already neck-deep in the scheme by the time he confessed to her and had counseled him to go to the police. He blames Nevison for the whole ordeal although all Nevison did was refuse to give him a raise and supposedly rip his father off at some point.
- Prison Rape: He becomes a victim of this when he's in prison.
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness
- Villainous Breakdown
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Kevin never intended for Ann to get hurt, and simply wanted the ransom money so he could better provide for his wife and children.
Ashley
Ashley Cowgill
Played By: Joe Armstrong
- Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being too proud to admit it, he's horrified upon learning that Tommy raped Ann.
- He Knows Too Much: Ashley is murdered in a drive-by by his superiors—the police later suspect it is Darius Knezevic himself—after he agrees to provide the police with information on them in exchange for a reduced sentence for his complicity in the kidnapping.
Lewis
Lewis Whippey
Played By: Adam Long
- Alas, Poor Villain
- "Reason You Suck" Speech: Lewis, one of the kidnappers, calls out Kevin on not getting his hands dirty with the actual kidnapping, and that a police officer is dead because of his scheming.
West Yorkshire Police
Shafiq
Constable Shafiq Shah
Played By: Shane Zaza
Badal
Praveen Badal
Played By: Ramon Tikaram
Mc Askill
