Gentleman Jack (Season 1)
Jul. 1st, 2022 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThis was fun and as good as advertised. I had watched a BBC (I think) movie titled the Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister years ago, but I barely remember anything from it other than it following the same emotional beats as Maurice and Tipping the Velvet - gay character has first great love, first great love dumps them in favour of a straight life, gay character finds second great love who is commits to the gay life, we see that first great love is living a fake life while hero(ine) is happy with second great love. Sally Wainwright's version has less predictability, lots of vitality and a standout central charismatic performance from Suranne Jones - whom I remember as the temporary embodiment of the TARDIS in Doctor Who and as Mona Lisa in The Sarah Jane Adventures - , several subplots dealing with Anne Lister's servants and tenants which provide a good different and at times counter perspective to hers, and a nicely complicated family set up which I also didn't remember from that long ago movie that includes our heroine's fraught relationship with her younger sister Marian.
(Sidenote: why on earth are so many newspaper reviews refering to this as a Regency story, though? It starts in 1732, and the Regency ended in 1820 when George III. died and his oldest son, the Prince Regent, became George IV.)
Anne Lister, aka "Gentleman Jack" of the title,diary-writing lesbian, landowner wishing to be a coal magnate, is in her unabashed confidence in herself (and her sexuality) and her mixture of determination and smarts an excellent heroine, but what I really admire is that the series doesn't pander to the audience by doing that thing where all sympathetic characters in a period piece, especially the heroes, have progressive views in everything, and you can tell the villains by the way they're the only ones holding prejudices. Anne Lister has progressive views about women, but she's a died-in-the-wool Tory sideeying nearly anything else that looks like social progress. (It's sister Marian who thinks that franchise voting needs to be reformed, for example.) Her self understanding as a landowner does include patriarchal responsibility for her tenants - for example, she's sincerely concerned for a boy who has lost his leg courtesy of a ruthless carriage driver - , but at the same time she shows zero interest or concern for her maid's obvious bad state (where it takes the other servants zero time to figure out the maid must be pregnant), isn't deterred from her determination to use the coal on her land by a trip to a coal mine where we see child labor in progress and certainly if she could vote would vote All Tory, All The Time. It's fun to watch Anne Lister go toe to toe with the local coal barons who think they can outwit her because she's a woman, but the series makes sure you also get the perspective of the servants and tenants whose lives can be upended at a whim of their boss. Also, much as Anne has had her heart broken by previous girlfriends who in the end decided to marry men after all, both of whom she#s still in contact with, we see her getting into the central romance of season one with a very period appropriate mixture of motives: her future love interest is attractive and sweet, yes, but she's also financially loaded, and still "malleable".
Said love interest, Ann Walker, as the other main character is the one who gets the big character development, Anne Lister's character being already formed when we meet her, and "learning to stand up for herself" (not just to the obvious people, i.e. the family members who high handedly decide what's good for her all the time, but also to Anne Lister) is it. Both Anne and Ann - the series also has a Marian and a Mariana, and yet another Anne in the waiting, because real life is obnoxious like that with its first names - happen to be sinceely religious, which is another anti-cliché touch, though this doesn't stop Anne Lister from making mince meat of the most hypocritically loathsome 19th century Reverend this side of Barchester Tower's Obediah Slope.
There's a lot of black humor sprinkled across the show, especially concerning the fate of another boo-hiss character, but it never feels patronizing in a "weren't those people quaint?" way. And the show commits to its looks, which in this post-Regency, pre-Victorian time (when Britain was ruled by the last of the Hannover monarchs) already means very elaborate hairstyles for the women and grand puffy sleeves, but not a corset in sight. (Stays all the way.) I also like touches such as Anne Lister kissing her beloved older aunt's hand when she greets or leaves her, or that when Anne's letter mentions she's visited the Hercules statue in Kassel, which she admired but felt let down by the cascades below it, we see, lo and behold, the Hercules statue of Kassel and the cascades, not some completely wrong footage. (Excuse me, I'm still scarred from occasions like when Highlander: The Series said "Berlin" and then promptly showed a Bavarian beer garden, or Alias the tv series said "Munich" and showed Passau, and so forth.)
The first season wraps up its romantic plots but leaves the business plots somewhat teasingly dangling, and includes a bit of a "X thinks they've gotten away with spoilery thing Y, BUT HAVE THEY?" kind of cliffhanger. I'll be sure to watch season 2. Also, I wonder whether anyone has written Gentleman Jack/Bronte RPF crossovers yet, what with the locations?
(Sidenote: why on earth are so many newspaper reviews refering to this as a Regency story, though? It starts in 1732, and the Regency ended in 1820 when George III. died and his oldest son, the Prince Regent, became George IV.)
Anne Lister, aka "Gentleman Jack" of the title,diary-writing lesbian, landowner wishing to be a coal magnate, is in her unabashed confidence in herself (and her sexuality) and her mixture of determination and smarts an excellent heroine, but what I really admire is that the series doesn't pander to the audience by doing that thing where all sympathetic characters in a period piece, especially the heroes, have progressive views in everything, and you can tell the villains by the way they're the only ones holding prejudices. Anne Lister has progressive views about women, but she's a died-in-the-wool Tory sideeying nearly anything else that looks like social progress. (It's sister Marian who thinks that franchise voting needs to be reformed, for example.) Her self understanding as a landowner does include patriarchal responsibility for her tenants - for example, she's sincerely concerned for a boy who has lost his leg courtesy of a ruthless carriage driver - , but at the same time she shows zero interest or concern for her maid's obvious bad state (where it takes the other servants zero time to figure out the maid must be pregnant), isn't deterred from her determination to use the coal on her land by a trip to a coal mine where we see child labor in progress and certainly if she could vote would vote All Tory, All The Time. It's fun to watch Anne Lister go toe to toe with the local coal barons who think they can outwit her because she's a woman, but the series makes sure you also get the perspective of the servants and tenants whose lives can be upended at a whim of their boss. Also, much as Anne has had her heart broken by previous girlfriends who in the end decided to marry men after all, both of whom she#s still in contact with, we see her getting into the central romance of season one with a very period appropriate mixture of motives: her future love interest is attractive and sweet, yes, but she's also financially loaded, and still "malleable".
Said love interest, Ann Walker, as the other main character is the one who gets the big character development, Anne Lister's character being already formed when we meet her, and "learning to stand up for herself" (not just to the obvious people, i.e. the family members who high handedly decide what's good for her all the time, but also to Anne Lister) is it. Both Anne and Ann - the series also has a Marian and a Mariana, and yet another Anne in the waiting, because real life is obnoxious like that with its first names - happen to be sinceely religious, which is another anti-cliché touch, though this doesn't stop Anne Lister from making mince meat of the most hypocritically loathsome 19th century Reverend this side of Barchester Tower's Obediah Slope.
There's a lot of black humor sprinkled across the show, especially concerning the fate of another boo-hiss character, but it never feels patronizing in a "weren't those people quaint?" way. And the show commits to its looks, which in this post-Regency, pre-Victorian time (when Britain was ruled by the last of the Hannover monarchs) already means very elaborate hairstyles for the women and grand puffy sleeves, but not a corset in sight. (Stays all the way.) I also like touches such as Anne Lister kissing her beloved older aunt's hand when she greets or leaves her, or that when Anne's letter mentions she's visited the Hercules statue in Kassel, which she admired but felt let down by the cascades below it, we see, lo and behold, the Hercules statue of Kassel and the cascades, not some completely wrong footage. (Excuse me, I'm still scarred from occasions like when Highlander: The Series said "Berlin" and then promptly showed a Bavarian beer garden, or Alias the tv series said "Munich" and showed Passau, and so forth.)
The first season wraps up its romantic plots but leaves the business plots somewhat teasingly dangling, and includes a bit of a "X thinks they've gotten away with spoilery thing Y, BUT HAVE THEY?" kind of cliffhanger. I'll be sure to watch season 2. Also, I wonder whether anyone has written Gentleman Jack/Bronte RPF crossovers yet, what with the locations?
no subject
Date: 2022-07-01 08:14 pm (UTC)Because "Regency" doesn't just refer to a political event but is a cultural moniker. Even the first sentence of its Wikipedia article defines it as "The Regency era of British history officially spanned the years 1811 to 1820, though the term is commonly applied to the longer period between c. 1795 and 1837."
For the same reason, we have the concept of the "long 18th century" from maybe 1688 to 1815, and we have "Victorian" architecture and cultural mores in the US, where Queen Victoria never ruled.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-02 06:14 pm (UTC)If you like Suranne, check out Scott & Bailey, where she plays a detective in present day Manchester, with Mrs Priestly as her crusty boss. Same writer/showrunner Sally Wainwright makes Happy Valley which you'd ADORE.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-02 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-04 06:12 am (UTC)