Gentleman Jack review: Being Anne Lister is harder than it looks

Though things seem to be going well for Anne Lister on Gentleman Jack at the moment, that success comes with a high price tag.

Watching the first two episodes of Gentleman Jack, it’s easy to assume that Anne Lister’s life isn’t exactly difficult.

Sure, she’s an unconventional woman. She’s outspoken, opinionated and brash. Her style of dress is hardly what you’d call traditional. And her preference for romantic attachments with women is something of an open secret amongst almost everyone that knows her.

But, she’s also extremely smart, successful and largely well off. Her bad breakup that kicks off the show doesn’t seem that bad in hindsight. (Let’s be real: Marianna Lawton wasn’t worthy of Anne’s affections anyway.) Yes, Shibden Hall isn’t a fancy manor at the moment. But it could be, with a little work. And Anne’s aristocratic status obviously offers her a certain level of safety that would not be available to a woman of a lower station.

Her behavior simply gets her marked as “odd” or “interesting” among the local villagers, rather than deviant or dangerous, for example. Her forceful attitude with other local businessmen is met with acquiescence and a quiet acknowledgement of her surprising negotiation skills.

In short: Anne gets away with a lot, and the first two episodes of this show lull us into the idea that her life – despite its differences from the norm– is generally a straightforward and successful one.

The series’ third installment, “Oh, is that what you call it?” finally breaks down many of those assumptions. This episode offers us the series’ first extended look at just how hard it is to be Anne Lister, even as it reminds us how bravely determined she is to live her own life.

Gentleman Jack- Episode 3 – Suranne Jones, Joe Armstrong. Photo: Aimee Spinks/HBO

For all that Anne’s family seems broadly accepting of her sexual preferences, the everyday people around her do not necessarily share these feelings. Here, Gentleman Jack finally seems to remember that Halifax is not cosmopolitan London, inserting gossipy neighbors, anonymous warnings and judgmental day laborers to comment on Anne’s lifestyle choices with abandon.

Perhaps it’s strange that it takes us three episodes to see someone openly insult Anne for her appearance and style of dress. And maybe it’s even stranger that it still manages to feel so shocking when it does happen. Gentleman Jack has largely insulated us from this sort of response, crafting an image of Anne, indomitable.

And perhaps that image is mostly true. But it doesn’t mean that everyone else was accepting of it. (Or that they didn’t seen cruel anonymous letters about her when given the chance.)

Even as Anne’s courtship of lonely neighboring heiress heats up – they go from sharing their first kiss to sleeping together to getting caught in a compromising position by nosy neighbor Mrs. Priestly in the space of an hour. Yet, their relationship is oddly sweet, even if it does feel as though Anne is leading Ann Walker where she wants her to go at least 50 percent of the time.

Yet, despite the fact that Anne may have embarked on this particular chase with selfish intentions, it’s hard not to believe that her feelings are, at least in part, genuine. It’s obvious that she’s impressed by Walker’s ability to be open in a way that she herself often isn’t. Walker is the one taking big risks here, exploring a side of her sexuality she’s likely never paid attention to before, and calmly laughing off the surprise visit from a neighbor that threatens to ruin her.

In many ways, Walker is on the same sort of journey we never got to see Anne Lister take. Lister, for her part, explodes into the world of this story fully formed. She’s confident in both what she wants and who she is, and she’s accepted both those things for better or worse.

We never see her question her sexuality, or feel unsure about her various courtships. She’s fully comfortable with herself, and doesn’t seem to have any second thoughts about the life she’s chosen – or the one she left behind along the way.

Here, we not only see Ann Walker struggle with how she feels about her attraction to Anne, we also watch her admit that she’s not 100% sure whether she’d come to regret giving up a traditional life with children, either.

Granted, Walker seems to work through her trepidation at a fairly rapid pace, but it’s nice to see the show address the fact that not everyone is Anne Lister, either.

Gentleman Jack – Episode 3 – Anthony Flanagan, Tom Lewis, Felix Johnson. Photo: Matt Squire/HBO

Unfortunately, Gentleman Jack can’t give us a full hour fueled by Anne Lister’s personality alone, so there are two fairly boring subplots crammed into this week’s installment, one involving a Shibden Hall tenant and the other focused on Anne’s secretly pregnant ladies’ maid.

Perhaps the idea that Anne Lister, of all people, would be irreparably shocked about the idea that Eugenie’s found herself in family way, feels like a bit of a stretch given everything else we see her do in this episode. But the show really leans into the idea that Eugenie needs a marriage with one of Shibden’s servants, and it’s all apparently supposed to be funny that neither of them speak the same language.

A similar dumb subplot is focused on the Shibden Hall tenants, the Sowdens. Patriarch Sam is a sexist drunk, who shows up to work inebriated, shoots his mouth off to Anne, and physically abuses his own family.

One gets the sense that we’re all supposed to be shocked that his son Thomas eventually murders him and feeds his body to the family pigs, but since we just met this people an hour previously it’s hard to really care about Sam’s fate, particularly since he was a wife beater who threatened to kill his own children.

It would probably be more fun just to watch Anne walk furiously around town for an extra ten minutes, is what I’m saying.

Gentleman Jack continues May 13 at 10pm ET on HBO.