The return of BBC One’s Happy Valley has been one of the most anticipated come-backs this year – so thankfully we only had to wait until February for it to arrive on our screens.

Sally Wainwright’s BAFTA-winning first series had millions of people tuning in across the country in 2014 as her murky storyline of kidnap, drug dealing and life on the frontline of policing unravelled in spectacular fashion - keeping us on the edge of the sofa throughout.

Although events were all tied up rather nicely at the end of the last season, with a rousing final scene worthy of signing the show off as a one-series wonder, it would have been an absolute crime not to bring it back.

And we were not left disappointed by tonight’s corker of an opening episode, which saw Wainwright wheel out the big guns with a stellar line-up of new actors joining the ranks alongside Sarah Lancashire, Siobhan Finneran and James Norton.

Corrie favourite Julie Hesmondhalgh made fleeting appearances in this first episode as the wife of Downton Abbey’s Kevin Doyle, who – despite being worked ragged on a murder investigation – still seems to have time on his hands to be playing away from home. Cue this season’s rather more modern form of blackmail – a compromising series of photographs featuring suspenders and a feather bower, while knocked out cold on a hotel bed. Will it end nicely? When there is a scorned woman involved, I suspect not.

But that wasn’t all the casting director had up their sleeve for us in this opening episode – oh no! First we had Harry Potter’s Neville Longbottom kicking off at boss Nevison Gallagher, before driving angrily past two prostitutes – and Sergeant Cawood – in a white van, swigging from a bottle of vodka. I dread to think what J.K. Rowling would make of such behaviour.

And it seems that Tommy Lee Royce has attracted the attention of an unhinged lover, despite being banged up in the slammer – played wonderfully by the hugely talented Shirley Henderson, of Bridget Jones fame and Harry Potter’s Moaning Myrtle. Rather ironic then that the closing scene of the first episode saw her drenched in water staring in at the Cawood family home.

Wainwright has certainly set us up for a very promising second series, what with the discovery of the mutilated body of Tommy’s mother by Cawood herself while in pursuit of sheep rustlers. The finger of suspicion is not so much pointing at Cawood, but there is definitely a question mark hanging over her head.

I, for one, cannot wait to see where Wainwright takes us next.