The Yorkshire lady of renown is back and as charming, witty, and confident as ever. It’s been three years since “Gentleman Jack” aired its first season and, as protagonist Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) would put it, thank heaven and providence its second has finally arrived.
From creator-writer Sally Wainwright and based on the diaries of real-life “first modern lesbian” Anne Lister, “Gentleman Jack” follows Anne as she pursues her professional and romantic dreams. In Season 2, having taken the sacrament and exchanged rings with Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle), Anne is married at last and ready to build a life with her wife at Shibden Hall. She’s also buying up properties around Halifax and continuing construction on her own coal mine. In short, Anne is killing it in her personal life and in business — but not everyone is happy for her.
Put off by her sexual orientation (Anne and Ann don’t exactly live openly but anyone paying attention understands they’re more than just roommates), her rejection of gender norms, and her ambition, Halifax’s busy-bodies and businessmen alike are hellbent on taking Anne Lister down and “saving” Ann Walker from her influence. If they’re able to take control of the latter’s finances in the process, so much the better.
Although it doesn’t shy away from the difficulties a woman like Anne Lister would face in 1830s England, “Gentleman Jack” is a fundamentally joyful show and displays as much zeal as Anne does as a character. So, while the fuddy-duddy townspeople plot their sabotage, there are also fun storylines featuring Anne’s heretofore unseen network of lesbian friends and exes. One of these ladies, Tib (Joanna Scanlan), is a particular delight. She’s boisterous, hedonistic, and loves to stir the pot. It’s thanks to her loose lips that Ann learns of her new wife’s romantic past, and her possibly-not-quite-resolved feelings for a former lover, Mariana Lawton (Lydia Leonard). (In case you couldn’t tell, “Gentleman Jack,” for me, is most pleasurable when it goes full “L Word: Jane Austen Edition.”)
And while it’s possible to enjoy this show on a surface level — the romance, the costumes, the occasional soapiness — you get so much more out of it when you realize it’s a costume drama centering a character who is usually left out of costume dramas, or pick up on its contemporary parallels. In her community, it’s basically an open secret that Anne prefers the company of women. Some of the townsfolk are fine with it, others are disgusted. It’s as if Anne occupies two different worlds at once: one in which friends and family accept her for who she is, and one where people think she’s “unnatural” and must be punished.
At this moment in time — where Don’t Say Gay is law in Florida and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is on the rise throughout the U.S., yet the public support for LGBTQ+ rights is probably stronger than ever before — I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees Anne Lister straddling two worlds and feels a pang of recognition. She’s a proud member of a queer subculture that is surviving in very conservative times. In an environment that’s often very hostile, she loves women, her life, and herself without shame. Then and now, that’s a radical act.
Season 2 of “Gentleman Jack” debuts on HBO and HBO Max tonight at 10 p.m. EST.
