She Did It her Way: Gentleman Jack Review

HBO has always had a dark and mucky look at the period piece drama. From the extraordinary Deadwood, which gave us a new look at the American frontier, to the messy but occasionally brilliant Boardwalk Empire, they have had stunning visions of era we thought we knew. Other series, like the flawed Rome and the often sublime The Deuce, mainly seem determined to show us how much sex and sin pervades our civilization from ancient times to the present. But rarely have their been characters in these series one could look up to, or even admire. HBO is now attempting to do so with Gentleman Jack, a co-produced British effort that looks at a woman so anachronistic she could only have been real, because it doesn’t seem plausible that she could be fictional.

In the early nineteenth century, there lived a woman named Anne Lister, the rambunctious daughter of a Canadian landowner, who almost from her birth never fit in, and probably would have trouble fitting in today. She dressed in a man’s duster and walked with a purposeful stride. She got involved in fights with men, and was fascinated by the then fledging study of gross anatomy. When she lived in Halifax, she collected rents on her families property, and negotiated strong business dealings with men who soon found themselves out of their depths. And in an era when male homosexuality was considered an offense against God, she openly pursued and had affairs with other woman. A life this remarkable barely sounds plausible, and yet we know much about her because she kept incredibly detailed journals.

This kind of character practically screams to be turned into art (and it has been in the past, actually), and Sally Wainwright, who calls her a gift to dramatists, has done so in this series.  Suranne Jones is Anne Lister. I say this, because the way she embodies this character its hard to imagine anyone else portraying her. From the moment we see her pushing a horse-drawn carriage to its absolute limits to practically striding through the streets of Halifax, it becomes impossible to imagine anyone else playing ‘Gentleman Jack’. (Lister was known as this derogatorily in Canada, but songs were written about her eventually. One plays over the credits.).

It’s clear when she returns from London that most of Yorkshire has seen her before, and while most of her family admires her, her own sister can hardly stand her. She even threatens to marry so that her husband can take the position she has.  She doesn’t like the idea of her sister collecting the rents (“Better than no one should take them”, Anne points out) and she positively shudders at the ideas she has for modernizing the family home. But Anne continues to push forward boldly, talking back to farmers who thinking of withholding rent, arguing with the Rowsons, two brothers who want to such her land dry of the coal reserves she has, and attempting to woo a childhood acquaintance with a seduction so subtle, it shows just how ridiculous other networks are when it comes to love scenes. All of this seems so blatantly odd, and yet nary a four-letter word is uttered or a bodice shed. There are some love scenes, but one could make an argument that this is a series for teenagers and young adults, particularly those who are considering their sexuality or maybe just feeling like an outsider.

It’s not quite perfect. The fact that Lister speaks a bit to the camera occasionally is rather jarring. It doesn’t so much seem like she’s letting us in as an act of television trickery. One would like to see inside Lister’s head (she’s one of those rare historical figures we know a huge amount about) but voice over narration would probably do a lot better. And the series has so many moving parts that even those who follow Peak TV might well have trouble telling who is doing what to whom. But this is a small complaint to a series that does something most period pieces – particularly those on HBO – fail to do: look at an era from the past by highlighting a character that actually seems to foretell good things for the future, as well as have a series head by an honest to God heroine who isn’t anti-anything. She doesn’t need to hear ‘it gets better’; she’ll make the world better, and woe be those who try to stand in the way of progress. I don’t know if Gentleman Jack has a longer life beyond this season, but I know Anne Lister did, and I’d like to learn more of it.

My score: 4.5 stars.