Racy TV series Gentleman Jack has encouraged a generation of women to open up about their own sexuality.
The period drama, starring Suranne Jones and a smash hit on BBC1, is based on the real-life diaries of landowner Anne Lister. She dressed in black, wore a top hat and was dubbed Gentleman Jack – Jack being slang in the 1800s for a gay woman.
Sally Wainwright, who wrote TV hit Happy Valley, based the series on Anne’s revelations.
Now a string of women have told how the “Gentleman Jack effect” helped them to come to terms with their true feelings.
BBC documentary Gentleman Jack Changed My Life follows women – aged 22 to 63 – as they reveal how they found the courage to live openly as lesbians after watching the drama.
They include Yvonne, a Mormon who comes out to her adult children, and Sami, from Manchester, who is broaching the sensitive subject with her mother Hazel for the second time after a hostile response 10 years earlier.
Chichi, meanwhile, is a 22-year-old making a trip with her parents to come out to her grandparents. And partners Isabel and Katie tell of their pain that the church wedding they long for is not allowed.
Katie, 28, met Isabel five years ago when they sang in St Luke’s Church choir in Chelsea, West London. They share Anne Lister’s desire to marry in church – but current rules forbid that.
Isabel, 29, who works in publishing, tells the Sunday Mirror how she came out five years ago.
She says: “Katie and I sat down and watched the series. I had come across Anne Lister before and stumbled on her diaries as the company I worked for published it. I thought it so fascinating.
“I heard about the show and thought how brilliant it was. Sally Wainwright is phenomenal and what she has done for television and setting things in the north of England is brilliant.
“If I had this show growing up I might have known a lot sooner. It was emotional for us watching it, as I had grown up watching period dramas at university and had studied English literature.
“So to have a period drama on the BBC showing two people living their lives fairly unashamedly and to see everything they went through, and the barriers faced, is incredible to have this lost history of gay women. I do not think I was even ‘out’ when I first read the diaries, but little things started to make sense and I started questioning.
“Katie is my first girlfriend and it’s interesting to have that sense of history behind it.”
Isabel joined her local choir back in Cheshire, where she grew up, before moving to London.
But she is sad that not much progress has been made in the church since Anne’s time two centuries ago. Anne and her partner Ann Walker – played on TV by Sophie Rundle – had an unofficial wedding ceremony in church. It was not recognised by the C of E.
Isabel goes on: “Their frustration at not being able to have this, well that’s completely relatable to me. It’s been 188 years since their marriage in 1834. Nothing has changed.
“There’s a lot more acceptance and people can talk about it – and a lot of clergy are gay themselves and fighting the fight. But we are all hampered by this system.
“I have been a weekly churchgoer for 20 years and it has become very important to me now I know I am a gay woman, but it saddens me that the Church of England is not aways a welcoming place to be.
“I’ve been lucky my church in Cheshire, and the one I joined in London, have both been welcoming liberal churches. But there are a lot that aren’t. No gay person can marry in the Church of England where it stands, so while we have marriage equality in the country, and we can marry in a civil ceremony, we can’t marry in the church we attend.
“Our vicar would love to marry us but he can’t, so there is a lot of clergy in the Church of England who are supportive and want to marry gay couples, but they can’t.”
Yvonne, from Blackpool, reveals in the documentary that watching the first series of Gentleman Jack in 2019 is “where my troubles began”. She tells researchers: “It hit me that I am not straight. I shook and laughed at the absurdity of it all.”
At 63, she says had no idea “how to navigate my way through this,” particularly as she is a Mormon and the Church of Latter Day Saints sees homosexuality and same-sex marriage as a sin.
Yvonne – who has son Jordan and daughter Laurie – adds: “That is difficult. I can say to people I am gay and they all understand and they may well treat me normally and all be okay, but if I met somebody then I am not really welcome as that is viewed as a sin.
“In my heart I love my faith but if I met somebody then I can’t have that joy. It is quite emotional. Do I just hang on and sacrifice that?”
Gentleman Jack pulled in nearly five million viewers for the final episode of series two last month. It dates from the 1830s, when men dominated the world of business and women were expected to marry and have children – and little was said of same-sex relationships.
In her diaries, Yorkshire businesswoman and adventurer Anne detailed her secret love affairs, her “wedding” to heiress Ann Walker and their life at Shibden Hall, near Halifax.
Four women in the documentary – Katie, Isabel, Sami and Yvonne – met in Halifax to visit a statue of Anne that was unveiled last year.
Actress Suranne, 43, says her “amazing” character has shown people it is “okay to explore gender in that way, to explore sexuality in that way and be courageous with it”.
Her co-star Sophie, 34 – who also starred in Peaky Blinders – tells the documentary: “I’ve had so many letters from people saying I watch the show and I was able to confront who I am and be comfortable with it.”
And series writer Sally, 59, adds: “I’m just pleased more people know about Anne Lister and are interested to know now. She deserves to be much more famous than she has been.”
Gentleman Jack Changed My Life is on BBC at 10.40pm on Tuesday, May 24 and available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
