To quote Nora Ephron in her take-down of Dorothy Schiff, I feel bad about what I’m going to do here. It’s not a take-down, but still, I feel bad. I am probably in the wrong. I’m being all the things one is accused of in these instances, in good faith and bad: chippy, oversensitive, territorial, ungenerous and, as my mother would have said, looking for nonsense. I have tried to frame the following less as opinion than reporting. I am, merely, passing on a conversation presently taking place among lesbians who watch a lot of prestige TV and tend to notice who wrote it. But I can only maintain the delusion so far. At some point, neutrality gives way to something else.
It’s about Sally Wainwright – sort of – who of course, we all love. We love Wainwright because we love Sarah Lancashire and Suranne Jones, her two leading ladies. There isn’t a lesbian in Britain who isn’t in love with Suranne Jones. I have no opinion about this, I am simply reporting the facts. The same goes for Sarah Lancashire. Wainwright is justifiably one of the most beloved creators of TV in Britain. Last week, she was to be found in this paper promoting season two of Gentleman Jack, her BBC/HBO show about Anne Lister, the landowner who rocked around Yorkshire in the mid-19th century, enthusiastically seducing women. Lister has been styled, by HBO and others, as the “first modern lesbian”.
