Hold on to Your Hats: HBO's 'Gentleman Jack' is a Wild Ride!
HBO/BBC’s Gentleman Jack tells the story of the remarkable Anne Lister, an industrialist and world traveler who lived in the late Georgian period near Halifax, West Yorkshire. Her extensive diaries included not only details of everyday life, but also coded descriptions of her love affairs with other women. I had my reservations about this series (read my post from a couple of months ago to find out why) and honestly wondered whether writer/director Sally Wainwright (Last Tango in Halifax, Happy Valley, To Walk Invisible) could deliver.
Not to worry. Wainwright, along with star Suranne Jones (Scott & Bailey, Doctor Foster) in the title role, knocks it out of the park.The real Anne Lister is listed on the credits as co-writer, since excerpts from her diaries, some never previously translated before, are included as bits of dialogue. And Jones is Lister—arrogant, clever, fearless. She’s dressed in black, with a wide skirt to enable climbing walls, or striding across her estate, and manspreads just about every time she sits down; she twirls her cane and tips her top hat at a rakish angle when off to visit her latest conquest. Her features are wonderfully androgynous and expressive.
