Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Gentleman Jack’ On HBO, The Real-Life Story Of A Hard-Driving Woman Looking For A Wife In 1830s English Society

Anne Lister, as out a lesbian as was possible in 1830s English society, struck a swaggering figure, running her estate with an eye towards making a profit, and coldly dealing with renters who have lived there for years. She also left many journals of her life, written in a code that took decades to break. Gentleman Jack, a new BBC/HBO miniseries, is about her quest to take a wife in a world where women aren’t even allowed to collect rent. Read on for more…

GENTLEMAN JACK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see a shot of blue sky and wispy clouds, and we pan down to a small town. A graphic says “Halifax.” Then we pan to a bridge where a man is driving a horse-drawn gig pretty recklessly.

The Gist: The staff of Shibden Hall, in the West Yorkshire town of Halifax, are on edge, knowing that the well-traveled — and very particular — owner of the estate, Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) is coming home from a sojourn in Hastings. She’s coming back for two reasons: the man who owned the estate where she was living was killed in a silly accident, and the aristocrat she was having an affair with, Vere Hobart (Jodhi May), broke her heart by telling her that she intends to marry.

Yes, Anne is gay, something frowned upon in 1832 British society, but on top of that, she’s fiercely determined to live life on her terms. She doesn’t try to hide her true self under foofy dresses and a demurring personality; she wears suits and top hats, drives the coach bringing her to Halifax when the driver takes ill and, when she finds out that her father Jeremy (Timothy West) has been letting the farmers on his estate get behind on rent because the collector he hired has taken ill, she decides to collect the rents herself, an unheard-of thing for a woman to do.

One of the other things she wants to do is get married, but not to a man in a sham relationship. She wants to take a wife. When she returns to her “shabby family” in Shibden Hall, including her jealous sister Marianne (Gemma Whelan) and beloved aunt Anne (Gemma Jones), she doesn’t intend to stay long; while she decides to kick off farmers who can’t pay rent or have grown too old to tend to the land, and seriously considers mining part of the estate for coal, she intends to leave the day-to-day running of the estate in the hands of Samuel Washington (Joe Armstrong), who also manages the neighboring Walker estate.

Then she meets Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle), who is still shaken by an accident between her coach, the carriage of one of the farmers on the Shibden Hall estate, and the reckless driver in the gig; the accident caused the farmer’s son to fall and break his leg. Anne is so taken with Ann, and she knows that the fragile aristocrat is also attracted to her, she insists that she will make Ann Walker her wife.

Our Take: Gentleman Jack looks like your standard BBC-produced costume drama, and it proceeds as such for its first few minutes. Then Anne Lister dismounts from the drivers’ seat of her coach, covered in mud, and everything changes. Lister is different than any character we’ve seen in a drama from this era, and the more remarkable part is that she actually existed. The miniseries, written by Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley), is based on the Anne Lister’s actual journals, her painstaking, encoded writings about her travels and the people she loved and lost in her life.

Suranne Jones plays Lister with a swagger that tells the viewer that she’s not there to be the resigning, subservient woman that the members of her society expect. She doesn’t take excuses from the farmers behind on rent, she can’t stand that her sister stands up for workers and not land owners, and hates that her ancestral home is being run into the ground. But of course the more interesting part is that she’s trying like hell to be her true self, which is nearly impossible. That sense of unrest in her is palpable, especially when she makes love to a visiting aristocrat and occasional lover, Marianna Lawton (Lydia Leonard) and begs her to leave her husband and move with her to the more permissive environment of France.

Jones’ powerful performance is what is going to carry this miniseries past the usual drama-behind-the-politeness norm, even with fine performances by a who’s who of British drama actors.

Sex and Skin: We see Anne and Mrs. Lawton having sex in bed, under the covers, and it’s pretty passionate.

Parting Shot: Anne steadfastly strides to the front door of the Walker estate, announcing herself as such “Miss Lister for Miss Walker. She in?”

Sleeper Star: Albane Courtois plays Anne’s handmaid Eugénie Pierre, who is pregnant, courtesy of the lord of the Hastings estate where Anne was living. She doesn’t have a ton of lines in the first episode, but she and her baby will likely factor in later on.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing that we can see.

Our Call: STREAM IT, mainly for Suranne Jones’ performance as Anne Lister. Knowing that Gentleman Jack is based on a true story makes her performance even more compelling.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Gentleman Jack on HBO