Gentleman Jack review: Let Suranne Jones break your heart this week

Gentleman Jack pushes Anne and Ann apart in an emotional episode that leaves everyone vulnerable.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to tell dramatic stories based on actual history. After all, the characters are real people, and the things that happened to them are fact. You don’t need to watch Gentleman Jack to know whether Anne Lister and Ann Walker’s relationship worked out, or if Lister’s business ventures were successful. You can just Google it, and find out anything you want to know.

Therefore, it’s always remarkable when a dramatization makes us look at a known fact in different ways. We may already know precisely what the ending of Ann and Anne’s story looks like. But Gentleman Jack still manages to make it feel as though the outcome isn’t a foregone conclusion, and it treats the character’s emotional struggles as something very real and present.

Ann Walker has lost it a bit in the wake of her BFF Miss Parkhill informing her that she was basically destined for hellfire due to her feelings for Lister. And, to be fair, it’s an awfully big dose, as my grandmother would have put it. Anne’s suddenly being asked to reckon with an entirely new set of sexual possibilities for herself and flout every moral and societal law she’s ever been familiar with, all at once.

Ann is many things, but frequently brave is not one of them, and laughing off Nosy Parker neighbor Mrs. Priestly’s first intrusion on one of her girl-on-girl make out sessions appears to the be limit of her ability to buck public opinion. Despite her clear feelings for Lister, she’s once again not sure that making a life together publicly is the best future for either of them, an emotional wobble that’s pretty much left her in what appears to be days or even weeks of endless tears.

Gentleman Jack. Suranne Jones. Photo: Aimee Spinks/HBO

As we all know already, Lister is not particularly a patient person and decides that if Ann can’t commit to an engagement ring and a pseudo-marriage, then they might as well just call the whole thing off now. It’s possible that a lot of this could have been avoided had she just decided to practice some patience but, oh well, here we are.

Nevertheless, “Do ladies do that?” is mostly about showing us that Lister genuinely cares for Ann, despite the fact that she may have begun a relationship with her under something very like false pretenses. Her teary confession to her aunt that the two of them could have been genuinely happy together is incredibly moving, as is the fact that she finally breaks the fourth wall to address the audience directly about her feelings.

Here, at last, a Lister that’s stripped down to her core. As the episode begins, we see an Anne that’s physically battered and bloody, a result of her run-in with Rossens’ hired thug. She’s emotionally despondent over Ann’s apparent rejection and further frustrated that her mining venture is now indefinitely on hold. It’s…not her best day.

Yet, she rises above it anyway, holding Ann’s hand through nightmares and imaginary voices, and doing everything she can to help her, rather than ridiculing her obviously very genuine fear – that she’s going crazy, that she’s condemned to hell, that she’s sick past the point of all healing.

Lister, despite everything that’s happened between them, is determined to help Ann maintain control of her own life and fortune, as she knows perhaps better than anyone how difficult and treacherous life can be for a woman to navigate with no power of her own. (Heck, even women with some modicum of power and privilege end up sneaking back into their own homes covered in blood. Her brash attitude couldn’t protect Lister herself from the mere fact of her sex, in the end.)

Gentleman Jack handles Ann Walker’s mental decline with gentleness, though it goes out of its way to not put any sort of name to what’s actually happening to her. Is this an extreme form of PTSD, brought on by the return of the man who harassed and assaulted her? Is it religious guilt fueled by Miss Parkhill’s comments from last week? Is Ann just an anxious person who’s ill equipped to deal with emotional upheaval of any kind?

Her struggle with the potential moral and legal implications of her feelings for Lister takes on a very literal tinge in her dreams, as she sees herself and her lover hanged together in front of a crowd of their friends. (To be clear, this would never have actually happened given that homosexual acts weren’t illegal between women at this time, but it still makes for an arresting image.)

Gentleman Jack. Suranne Jones, Sophie Rundle. Photo: Matt Squire/HBO

In the end, the idea that Ann needs to go away for a while is probably what’s best for everyone, even though her final moments with Lister are genuinely tear-inducing. It’s not apparent that whatever’s going on with her can be cured where she is, and Gentleman Jack needs to give us all a minute to breathe away from this relationship.

The saga of Anne and Ann is far and away the most compelling part of the show, but there was more to Lister’s life than this courtship, and the show often forgets to show us any significant pieces of it. This episode does a better job, focusing on her the setbacks affecting the Lister mines as well as Ann’s illness, but since this show is now officially coming back for a second season, it is probably past time to focus on things outside of their romance.

(And that subplot about her pregnant ladies’ maid or the tenant farmer who fed his father to the family pigs? Not it.)

Gentleman Jack continues next Monday on HBO.