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“Jekyll” and the Civilizing Influence of Women

At a key moment in the first episode of Jekyll, a reimagining of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that premieres on BBC America this Saturday, Miranda, a private detective, realizes that the earnest, honest Dr. Jackman has morphed into his much more sinister alter ego. Knowing that both she and her lover, Min, are in danger, she sends Min away on a false errand.

Once Min has left, Miranda looks at Dr. Jackman, who has shifted into the powerful, brutal Hyde, and asks, “How often do we mistake a miracle for a monster?” Hoping to soothe him into believing that she believes in his potential, she adds, “You can be anything you want to be, Mr. Hyde.”

Miranda, played with cool assurance by British-Indian actress and author Meera Syal, is the normalizing force in Jekyll, a miniseries that often lingers with glee on Hyde’s manic lust for sex and violence. She and Min, played by Fenella Woolgar (Bright Young Things), squabble with each other in the joking way of an old couple, and they bring what Jekyll creator Steven Moffat called “a gust of normality” into each scene they’re in.

“It was important that you would want to go around to Miranda and Min’s house and they’d look after you,” Moffat said in an interview with AfterEllen.com last month. “They’d make you scones and tea and be sweet to you. … [Dr. Jackman] has to trust them instantly.”

Dr. Jackman and Mr. Hyde are both played by James Nesbitt (Bloody Sunday), who digs into his dual role with convincing gusto, and the series is set in present-day Britain.

As the miniseries begins, Dr. Tom Jackman, a research scientist, has discovered that he has another personality within him, and that man, Hyde, will stop at nothing to satisfy his cravings. Jackman, of course, is horrified by Hyde’s actions, and attempts to control Hyde by monitoring him with all manner of modern electronic devices.

(warning: some mild spoilers following.)

In order to prevent Hyde from finding out about his wife and twin sons, Jackman has left his bewildered, beautiful wife, Claire, and has built himself a prison of sorts, staffed by coolly sexy psychiatric nurse Katherine Reimer. (Claire is played by Gina Bellman, who played the bisexual Jane Christie in the British series Coupling, and Katherine Reimer is played by Michelle Ryan, who plays the title role in NBC’s short-lived Bionic Woman series.)

Claire, of course, suspects that her husband is having an affair, and hires a detective – Miranda – to investigate.

But before Miranda can do more than take some photos (which Claire brandishes in her husband’s face) and develop some very interesting theories, someone bribes her to stop her investigation. Jackman tracks her down, knowing that she must have seen him as Hyde, and despite the bribe she offers to help him figure out who, exactly, he is.

“It was a very difficult role to cast, actually,” said Moffat of the role of Miranda, whom he described as “probably the most straightforwardly heroic character” in the series. “A lot of the dialogue – aside from some bantering with Min – is being the very wise, very intelligent, very sort of morally alert one. So there’s a real danger that would be boring, frankly.”

In order to prevent the role of Miranda from becoming merely “the exposition character,” Moffat decided to make her part of a couple; Miranda’s partner, Min, also acts to some degree as her assistant. “It was less of a lesbian thing, but more of … if they’re a couple, they’ll squabble a bit,” he explained.

“You know, they’ll lecture each other a bit, and that’s just funny, rather than having just somebody being solemn all the time. I was thinking, they’re the way couples are who’ve been around each other for awhile.”

Moffat wanted to find someone who would give Miranda “a bit of life,” and he found that in Meera Syal, a writer (Anita and Me) and comedian (Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee, The Kumars at No.42) who was awarded the MBE – that’s two steps shy of becoming a Dame – in 1997.

“Just being the very clever, very moral one, who comes in and really sort of explains the plot,” Moffat said with a laugh, “can be dull, so it was a tough part to cast. We went around to a lot of people, a lot of very good actresses trying to get someone who just gave it a bit of flavor, and Meera is just – she’s a comedy performer – could just give it a little bit of a spin without doing too much.”

“A lot of detective roles you read are a load of clichés,” Syal said in a press release. “Miranda was such a different character and I really enjoyed her relationship with Min, not just because she’s a lesbian but because the kind of banter they have is funny and fresh and rather Noel Cowardy. And they’re also actually probably one of the happiest couples in the whole series! Miranda and Min’s relationship is one of the spines running through the drama.”

Min is played by Fenella Woolgar, who made a splash in Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things (2003), an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. Moffat had seen her in that film – “she was brilliant in that, so funny” – and “without necessarily thinking that she was ever going to play the part [of Min], I just sort of wrote it in her tone of voice,” he said.

“I never really thought about it again, because it was quite a small part at that stage,” Moffat continued. “And then when she same in – she was the first person to come in for the audition – and she read the part and it was brilliant, of course, I said, ‘We might as well close it down ’cause that’s it. That’s actually her.’ We couldn’t tell her that ’cause her agent would charge us more,” he joked, “but she was the only person who could ever have played [the part].”

Shortly after Woolgar was cast as Min, she informed Jekyll‘s producers that she was pregnant and that her pregnancy was going to show. Initially taken aback – “It just gave you a moment, you said, ‘well, I just cast a lesbian,'” – Moffat then decided, “Well, actually, they can just be pregnant.”

He was unaware, he said, of the stereotype of the pregnant lesbian on television. “I drifted into cliché then,” Moffat said dryly. “I didn’t have a choice, I apologize! But I literally – her tummy was going to show, and we didn’t even know how much it was going to show … There was no question of recasting, because it had to be her. I’m sorry that it’s a cliché.”

Moffat felt that the pregnancy, ultimately, helped to establish Min and Miranda as an established couple. “It really cements them as a couple, a proper couple,” he explained. “You know, they’re not girlfriends. They’re really together.”

He added that the two are married, though that detail was cut from the final version of the show.

Moffat previously worked on the British series Coupling and Doctor Who, both of which had LGBT story lines and characters. When asked whether British series make more of a conscious effort to include gay characters, Moffat answered: “I don’t think there’s a conscious effort. I don’t think it’s for virtuous reasons, it’s more just, well, that’s true, isn’t it? I mean, if you know more than three or four people, you almost certainly know someone who’s gay, and usually as part of the furniture, in a way.

“As with Miranda and Min, there’s an awful lot more to talk about than the fact they’re gay. There isn’t even really a moment where they say it, it’s just that – as part of the furniture.”

Miranda and Min are present throughout the four-episode miniseries (the first and last episodes are two hours long), but as supporting characters, their roles are limited. What is most interesting is that from the very beginning, they are situated as the series’ calm, measured center, to which all the other characters come for both information and support.

“The thing of being civilized is, in a way, resisting your lowest, basest and, frankly, most fun impulses,” Moffat said at a press conference in July. “So, yeah, that’s what Jekyll and Hyde is about. Obviously, it’s about that. It’s about being civilized. It’s about being decent. That’s an effort. That’s a thing that we have to do.”

The fact that the two lesbian characters are presented as the series’ civilized, decent center – especially in comparison to the viscerally motivated Hyde, a bloodthirsty male if ever there was one – makes Jekyll quite a gay-positive series.

And when it comes to gender roles, Jekyll firmly places men on the wild end of the scale, only one step removed from becoming a monster, whereas women are almost always presented as pure of heart, a civilizing influence.

“I’m afraid it’s just true, that women are more trustworthy than men,” said Moffat with a laugh. “I wish it wasn’t true, but I would trust a woman a hundred times more than a man.”

Jekyll the complete series is now available on DVD. Read our mini-review of it here.

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