“Gentleman Jack” has found its leading lady. “Doctor Foster” star Suranne Jones will play Anne Lister in Sally Wainwright’s upcoming HBO and BBC One series, Deadline reports.

Formerly titled “Shibden Hall,” “Gentleman Jack” is set in 1832 Halifax, West Yorkshire and based on Lister’s diaries. “Returning after years of exotic travel and social climbing, Anne determines to transform the fate of her faded ancestral home, Shibden Hall,” the official synopsis details. “To do this, she must re-open her coal mines and marry well. But the charismatic, single-minded, swashbuckling Anne Lister — who walked like a man, dressed head-to-foot in black, and charmed her way into high society — has no intention of marrying a man. True to her own nature, she plans to marry a woman.”

Lister has often been referred to as “the first modern lesbian,” and was nicknamed “Gentleman Jack” in her hometown.

Wainwright is among the project’s executive producers. The BAFTA winner created the beloved crime drama “Happy Valley” and wrote and directed the 2016 BBC One movie “To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters.” It aired in the U.S. on PBS’ “Masterpiece Theater.”

“When people talk about my work, and talk about me writing for women, or strong female characters — it’s made me realize how badly women have been served in the past,” Wainwright has said. “I just invented characters I wanted to read about, blissfully unaware that I was doing a feminist thing,” she explained. “But so many female characters are these Airfix kits — little bits put together to make something that’s meant to resemble a woman. And it is quite striking, when you look into the history of telly, that predominantly women have been written by men, and represented through the prism of men’s eyes.”

She’s described Lister as “a gift to a dramatist” and explained that bringing her life story to the screen “is the fulfillment of an ambition [she’s] had for 20 years.”

Jones’ credits include “Save Me,” “Scott & Bailey,” and “Coronation Street.”