The weekend on television Jasper Rees Not your average local 19thcentury lesbian landowner
Anne Lister is a woman for our times who happens to have been around for the Corn Laws. Her encrypted diaries, decoded 150 years after her death, are an empowering LGBTQ+ urtext. It was only a matter of time until Sally Wainwright, the mighty bard of West Yorkshire who has tangoed in Halifax and walked with the Brontës, got around to the remarkable story of her local 19thcentury lesbian landowner.
In fact, television has been here before. Maxine Peake played Anne in 2010 in a BBC Two single drama. That told of her grief over her lover’s marriage and her consolatory trysts with a like-minded gal pal. By accident or design,
(BBC One, Sunday) neatly begins where The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister left off, with Anne (Suranne Jones) fixing to seduce demure local heiress Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle). (Lister nerds will note that Gemma Jones plays Anne’s sympathetic aunt in both dramas.)
The diaries are the obvious entry point for this secret story, but Wainwright is commendably focused on rounding out her mannish, manic heroine who brooks no opposition as she leaps briskly over the wall and into
a male world, collecting rents, sinking mines, shooting horses.
Jones wonderfully fleshes her out as an intellectual force of nature with a singularly abrupt manner. It’s already made clear, in this first episode of eight, that if she didn’t have designs on you it wasn’t such fun being a woman around Anne, which explains the wounded snarls of her sister Marian (Gemma Whelan) and the shocked anxiety of her maid Elizabeth (Rosie Cavaliero). But that radiant smile she unleashes has the wattage to hypnotise not just the vulnerable Ann but the defenceless viewer.
We are definitely a target: hence Anne’s conspiratorial glances to camera. It’s not the production’s fault that Fleabag has cornered the market with this trope. Those looks are intended to bridge the chasm between then and now. This Anne is so modern she’s righteously ranting about female suffrage – a cheeky anachronism to go with Murray Gold’s pumping pop soundtrack.
There’s something for everyone in Gentleman Jack: frocks and wigs, speeding coaches and stately wood panelling, gender politics, social history and, of course, passion. “The only thing I’ve ever been on the run from is the banal,” said Anne in bed. No fear of that here.
Vampires are allergic to sunlight and garlic, but what happens when you expose them to a more corrosive force such as a documentary film crew? Might a bloodsucker’s fearsome status crumple if their every move were captured on camera? This niche scenario is explored in What We Do in the Shadows
(BBC Two, Sunday), a new sitcom which has much fun sinking its gnashers into the undeadly brand.
The concept hails from New Zealand, where it started out in 2005 as a short film that grew to feature length in 2014. Its originators have a splendid pedigree: Jemaine Clement of comedy duo Flight of the Conchords and Taika Waititi made the delightful film Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The FX channel (where the series is shown in the US) has transplanted the idea to Staten Island with a new British cast, retaining the folky Sixties theme tune (You’re Dead by Norma Tanega).
There’s perhaps not much fresh juice left in the mockumentary format mined so fruitfully from This Is Spinal Tap to W1A. There was one moment of delicious invention when the skeletal ghoul Baron Afanas (Doug Jones) emerged from his coffin and did a double take when he spotted the crew. “It’s like they’re not even here,” he was reassured.
The script runs on bathos. None of the characters can quite live up to their own self-image. The preening Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak) is so monickered, he said with an immodest shrug, “because I just never relent”. His tubby unloved underling Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) explains that being a vampire slave is “like being a best friend… who is also a slave”. Then there’s Laszlo (Matt Berry) and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), who look much diminished sitting in adjacent chairs being interviewed like any bickering couple. Laszlo claimed to have been the most handsome man in a village which was, Nadja drily added, much affected by leprosy.
There were gags about sex, blood and death, plus worshipful nods to Twilight and Interview with the Vampire. Whether the basic joke is enough for a whole series remains to be seen.
Gentleman Jack
What We Do in the Shadows