HBO's Gentlemen Jack
My life is not that interesting, so one might think I'd have ample time to stay on top of all the latest things coming out in entertainment. Nonetheless, my boring-as-hell life keeps me busy enough that I find it difficult to remain aware of everything. So, at least with regards to books and TV shows (two things I wholeheartedly enjoy), I'm in a constant state of "playing catch-up."
The latest thing I've caught up on was a TV series that completely flew under my radar last year (probably due to the Game of Thrones send off), yet I found myself totally enamored of once I began watching it. The series in question was the BBC/HBO production Gentleman Jack.
Gentleman Jack tells the story of Anne Lister, a real woman who lived during the waning days of the Georgian Period and the earliest (only first three, in fact), years of the Victorian era.
Her father had been a British solider during the American War of Independence (or as we call it, the Revolution), and her family was rooted in the town of Halifax, Yorkshire, England, in a landed estate known as Shibden Hall, making her part of the high end of the English Middle-class (money and land, without a title).
What made Lister remarkable--and why she's remembered today--is for how atypical a woman she was for her time.
She was an industrialist, who took advantage of the need for coal to power the steam-engines that would come to dominate England's transportation in Victoria's era. She was independent and highly intelligent, despite her lack of formal education. Most of all though--and what serves as a central source of ongoing conflict in the show's story--was that Lister was a Lesbian (to use our modern term), who kept a detailed diary containing over four million words, which detailed both the facts of her daily life and the details of her sex life.
It's this copious diary that serves as the source material for the show's story.
The story, though, roots itself specifically at the beginning of the last major period of Lister's life, the time when she formed the relationship with Ann Walker, Lister's companion and lover during the last six years of her life. After years of struggling to find the contentment and love she'd been searching for, at long last, she finds it in her own hometown with Walker. Of course (and if it didn't, it wouldn't be a story worth telling), this doesn't come without complications. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I won't go into detail.
There's so much to love about this show and the story it tells. Like many BBC and HBO shows, what it lacks in quantity (being only 8 episodes long), it makes up for in quality.
Then there's the writing. Lister, as portrayed Suranne Jones, is by far one of the cleverest characters written for television, and it comes through in the dialogue. Partly this comes from the worldliness Jones infuses into the character, but it also comes from the fact that Lister, being who she is, had to be clever as a woman in a "man's world." She investigates everything. She asks questions. She actively seeks to solve every problem she's confronted with, and she never takes anyone's word at face value (especially if they're a man). She's an independent-minded skeptic reliant on no one, and Sally Wainwright's words make her come across that way. Some of her lines sound almost Jane Austen-esque in terms of how clever they are.
There are also the occasional asides, nods, and looks that Lister (and at least once, her sister), give to the camera. This acknowledgement of the audience lets us into her world and the secrets of her life. We, the viewers, act as the objective recorders of her life, serving as a good substitute for scenes where she could lock herself away in her study and write it all down in her diaries. This way the story always seems "lived," rather than "recollected after the fact."
Most powerful of all though, there are the themes at the heart of this story that are explored through the characters and their conflict. Probably the two most universally explored themes in narrative art are the themes of Love and the idea of "Finding Where One Belongs As an Outsider."
For someone like Lister, these themes are particularly poignant. As a Lesbian, and more so as a Woman, living in Late-Georgian England, her society dictates that her place was in a home, with a man, acting as nothing more than a broodmare. Yet, because of her sexuality, innate and cultivated intellect, and her own head-strong nature, such a box would not do for Lister. As a result, she's that most sympathetic of characters: an outsider. However, she is also an outsider who seeks to find out place in the world she lives in, and the place where she in the end finds it is with Ann Walker, a fellow outsider.
Walker--who history remembers because of her prominence in Lister's diaries--was also an outsider. A woman of independent means, with none of the overt rebelliousness of her love-interest, Walker could've easily found herself "playing the part," of a typical English woman of her time. It's only with Lister's entrance into her life that she begins to embrace her uniqueness. In addition to her sexuality, Walker is also stricken with what we'd now call "mental health problems." She suffers from crippling anxiety, exasperated by her judgmental extended family, which spiraled down into bouts of depression. Yet, with Lister, she's able to find her own strength of a kind and confidence in herself.
Together, the two woman are able to find both love and the place they belong, which is together.
A second series (or season), is set to go into production, and if Wainwright and the rest of her creative team, including her cast, are able to keep up this level of quality, I have no doubt that the show will continue to be engaging. While one could primarily see it as a "Gay Period Drama," I see it as something more.
It's a heartening story to which anyone who's every felt like an outcast can relate.
(Oh, and on a final note, there's probably not a series on TV today with such an engaging, catchy closing theme. Check out the video below to listen to it.)
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| Source: IMDb |
Gentleman Jack tells the story of Anne Lister, a real woman who lived during the waning days of the Georgian Period and the earliest (only first three, in fact), years of the Victorian era.
Her father had been a British solider during the American War of Independence (or as we call it, the Revolution), and her family was rooted in the town of Halifax, Yorkshire, England, in a landed estate known as Shibden Hall, making her part of the high end of the English Middle-class (money and land, without a title).
What made Lister remarkable--and why she's remembered today--is for how atypical a woman she was for her time.
She was an industrialist, who took advantage of the need for coal to power the steam-engines that would come to dominate England's transportation in Victoria's era. She was independent and highly intelligent, despite her lack of formal education. Most of all though--and what serves as a central source of ongoing conflict in the show's story--was that Lister was a Lesbian (to use our modern term), who kept a detailed diary containing over four million words, which detailed both the facts of her daily life and the details of her sex life.
It's this copious diary that serves as the source material for the show's story.
The story, though, roots itself specifically at the beginning of the last major period of Lister's life, the time when she formed the relationship with Ann Walker, Lister's companion and lover during the last six years of her life. After years of struggling to find the contentment and love she'd been searching for, at long last, she finds it in her own hometown with Walker. Of course (and if it didn't, it wouldn't be a story worth telling), this doesn't come without complications. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I won't go into detail.
There's so much to love about this show and the story it tells. Like many BBC and HBO shows, what it lacks in quantity (being only 8 episodes long), it makes up for in quality.
Then there's the writing. Lister, as portrayed Suranne Jones, is by far one of the cleverest characters written for television, and it comes through in the dialogue. Partly this comes from the worldliness Jones infuses into the character, but it also comes from the fact that Lister, being who she is, had to be clever as a woman in a "man's world." She investigates everything. She asks questions. She actively seeks to solve every problem she's confronted with, and she never takes anyone's word at face value (especially if they're a man). She's an independent-minded skeptic reliant on no one, and Sally Wainwright's words make her come across that way. Some of her lines sound almost Jane Austen-esque in terms of how clever they are.
There are also the occasional asides, nods, and looks that Lister (and at least once, her sister), give to the camera. This acknowledgement of the audience lets us into her world and the secrets of her life. We, the viewers, act as the objective recorders of her life, serving as a good substitute for scenes where she could lock herself away in her study and write it all down in her diaries. This way the story always seems "lived," rather than "recollected after the fact."
Most powerful of all though, there are the themes at the heart of this story that are explored through the characters and their conflict. Probably the two most universally explored themes in narrative art are the themes of Love and the idea of "Finding Where One Belongs As an Outsider."
For someone like Lister, these themes are particularly poignant. As a Lesbian, and more so as a Woman, living in Late-Georgian England, her society dictates that her place was in a home, with a man, acting as nothing more than a broodmare. Yet, because of her sexuality, innate and cultivated intellect, and her own head-strong nature, such a box would not do for Lister. As a result, she's that most sympathetic of characters: an outsider. However, she is also an outsider who seeks to find out place in the world she lives in, and the place where she in the end finds it is with Ann Walker, a fellow outsider.
Walker--who history remembers because of her prominence in Lister's diaries--was also an outsider. A woman of independent means, with none of the overt rebelliousness of her love-interest, Walker could've easily found herself "playing the part," of a typical English woman of her time. It's only with Lister's entrance into her life that she begins to embrace her uniqueness. In addition to her sexuality, Walker is also stricken with what we'd now call "mental health problems." She suffers from crippling anxiety, exasperated by her judgmental extended family, which spiraled down into bouts of depression. Yet, with Lister, she's able to find her own strength of a kind and confidence in herself.
Together, the two woman are able to find both love and the place they belong, which is together.
A second series (or season), is set to go into production, and if Wainwright and the rest of her creative team, including her cast, are able to keep up this level of quality, I have no doubt that the show will continue to be engaging. While one could primarily see it as a "Gay Period Drama," I see it as something more.
It's a heartening story to which anyone who's every felt like an outcast can relate.
(Oh, and on a final note, there's probably not a series on TV today with such an engaging, catchy closing theme. Check out the video below to listen to it.)
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