Peaky Blinders star Sophie Rundle has signed up to star alongside Suranne Jones in a new lesbian themed BBC drama.

Rundle is best knowing for playing Ada Shelby in the popular series Peaky Blinders and previously appeared in Shetland, Happy Valley, and The Bletchley Circle. Suranne Jones logged four seasons in as Detective Inspector Rachael Bailey in crime drama Scott & Bailey, before garnering critical acclaim for her leading role in Doctor Foster. 

Together the two will star in the new 8 part series Gentleman Jack which will portray the life of Britian’s “first modern lesbian” Anne Lister. Jones will play Lister, while Rundle will portray her partner Ann Walker.

Jones posted an image of the two at a recent table read to her Instagram account. Alongside the photo the caption reads “Meet my wife”. Jones  commented that she was “already a little bit in love.”

Also in the cast are several well known actors including Timothy West, Gemma Jones, Amelia Bullimore, Shaun Dooley, Vincent Franklin and Peter Davison.

Anne Lister was an eighteenth century landowner in Yorkshire. She was an accomplished mountaineer and wrote extensive diaries about her life. All together her diaries are more than four millions words long.

The sections of her diaries which document her same-sex relationships were written in a code made up of the Greek alphabet, zodiac and punctuation. The coded sections of her diary detail her seduction techniques and document her love life.

Historians have declared the work of great value not only because of it’s detailed account of a lesbian life in the eighteenth century but also because of its records of everyday life and historic events.

OIP Staff