Continuing its history of lesbian-themed programs such as Tipping the Velvet (2002), Fingersmith (2005) and Daphne (2007), the BBC delivered another lesbian/bi tale this year in Mistresses, a six-episode drama focused on four 30-something female friends living in Bristol. The series, which just ended on Feb. 12, could be described as a more down-to-earth, British version of Sex and the City – including a prominent lesbian story line.
The twist, in Mistresses, is that each woman’s story centers on some form of romantic infidelity. There’s Katie (Sarah Parish), a doctor who has been having a two-year affair with one of her recently deceased male cancer patients. There’s Siobhan (Orla Brady), a lawyer who is drawn toward one of her male colleagues. There’s Trudi (Sharon Small), a 9/11 widow beginning to suspect that her husband might still be alive.
Anna Torv (who played Alex) has been cast as the female lead in J.J. Abrams’ new sci-fi show, Fringe, possibly limiting her potential involvement in a second series of Mistresses. If it does return, hopefully its positive and complex portrayal of Jessica will continue.
Mistresses is available on DVD in the U.K. Visit the show’s official site for further information.
And there’s Jessica (Nina’s Heavenly Delights star Shelley Conn), a poised and confident events organizer who is having an affair with her male boss, but finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Alex (The Secret Life of Us star Anna Torv), one half of a lesbian couple whose wedding Jessica is supposed to be organizing.
Warning to non-U.K. viewers: This article contains details about the first season of Mistresses that has already aired in the U.K.
Jessica is the youngest, the most glamorous and in some ways the most hard-edged of the four friends, and from her first appearance she is presented as having a different attitude toward relationships than the others. At the beginning of the first episode when the women get together for a girls’ night in, Katie finds Jessica on the phone with her latest conquest and asks Trudi about him:
Katie: Married? Trudi: Aren’t they always? Katie: Well, maybe it’s love. Trudi: What, with Jessica?Later in the episode, Jessica expounds breezily to her friends on what she sees as the benefits of being a mistress rather than a wife: “You see, married men are a no-brainer. They’re bedroom-trained, they’re low-maintenance, and you’ve got a ready-made exit strategy. No mess, no fuss.”
While all of the other women have experienced deep romantic relationships – with Katie devastated by the loss of her married lover, Trudi still unable to let go of her husband six years later, and Siobhan in love with her husband even if sexually unsatisfied – Jessica is presented as someone who has yet to fall in love. All that changes when she is introduced to Alex and Lisa (Alys Thomas), a couple of tall, blond lesbians who are planning their civil partnership ceremony. Hitting it off badly with Alex at first, and appalled at the idea of being involved in any way with a wedding, Jessica dubs them “the lezzers from hell,” prompting her friends to ask sympathetically how things are going with the “spiky dykes.”
But she forms an unexpected connection with Alex when she manages to find the perfect place for the couple to say their vows. After this, an attraction and relationship develops quickly between Alex and Jessica.
Initially viewing it as just another fun fling, Jessica is shocked by the depth of her feelings when she sees Alex coming down the stairs in her wedding dress at the ceremony. From then on, she has to consider whether she is prepared to carry on as the eternal mistress (but to a woman this time) or whether she is finally prepared to want something more.Even if it were not for the plotline of Jessica questioning her sexuality, Mistresses would be of interest to lesbian viewers simply for matter-of-factly showing a lesbian couple preparing for their wedding in exactly the way a heterosexual couple would. For a prime-time show averaging 4.83 million viewers per episode (or about 20 percent of the U.K. viewing audience), this is no small thing.
The fact that the wedding between the two women is legal (the U.K. Civil Partnership Act went into effect in December 2005) makes it hugely moving to watch. This is one satisfaction that shows set in historical periods, such as Tipping the Velvet, can’t provide.
Of course, it was slightly frustrating that the wedding was shown in the context of one of the brides having cheated on her girlfriend just the night before. While Mistresses can’t be accused of treating its lesbian characters any differently than the straight ones – since all the story lines are focused on infidelity – it would be nice to have the chance to enjoy a happy, faithful civil partnership ceremony on TV before the gay characters start behaving as badly as everybody else for the sake of the drama.
As it was, however, Mistresses showed very little of the relationship between Alex and Lisa, and was mainly focussed on the growing relationship between Alex and Jessica.
In the first half of the series, this was undeniably fun to watch – partly because (on a shallow note) both actresses are utterly gorgeous, and partly because they had such great chemistry. While a pretty and previously heterosexual girl testing out bisexuality is hardly a new story for television, Jessica’s story line was lent unusual depth both by the fact that she had never fallen in love before, and by some thoughtful and non-stereotypical writing.
In the moments before she is about to have sex with Alex for the first time – in what will be her first lesbian experience – Jessica loses her poise, shuttling around her apartment and offering Alex every type of drink she has available. Surprised, Alex says, “I, uh … I didn’t think you did nervous.”
Jessica comes to a halt and replies apologetically: “Well … I don’t. Usually. But then I wasn’t expecting to lose my virginity again.”
A line like this, showing how seriously Jessica takes the experience, is worlds away from a show like The O.C., where Marissa (Mischa Barton) embarked on a lesbian affair with her own Alex (Olivia Wilde), only to apparently forget that she had ever existed once the character disappeared from the show.
Mistresses‘ lesbian story line explicitly counteracts the tendency of TV shows to treat sex between women as something less significant than heterosexual sex.
In another well-written, funny scene that emphasizes the significance of Jessica’s feelings for Alex, a clueless Jessica attempts to explain to her friend Katie the strange and overpowering new feelings she is experiencing after sleeping with Alex:
Jessica: She did something to me. Not just a physical thing, although I felt it in a physical way. … Katie: So you really don’t know what that was. Jessica: No. Katie: Interesting. Tell me – what else was it like? Jessica: Overwhelming. Entirely. Katie: But not in a bad way. Jessica: No. Katie: Like your body and your emotions weren’t different things any more. Jessica: Yeah. Katie: [hilariously flat] You’re in love.
One of the earlier Jessica-Alex scenes – where Alex, trying on wedding dresses, persuades Jessica to try one on as well, and they have their first kiss – had led me to hope over-optimistically that the show might end with a lesbian wedding for Jessica, either with Alex or someone else. As it turns out, there is a possibility that Mistresses may be renewed for a second series, which perhaps explains why the writers decided not to take that route.
The direction they did take, though – with Alex, against her better judgment, deciding to carry on the affair with Jessica even after she is married, and Jessica falling back into her old pattern of being the mistress – made it harder for me to enjoy their story line in the second half of the series.Although the actresses still had good chemistry, it was difficult to root for them as a couple when Alex was cheating on her wife, and the supposedly life-changing experience of being in love didn’t actually seem to have changed very much for Jessica.
In the end, however, seeing how crushed her friend Siobhan’s husband, Hari, was by his wife’s affair, Jessica did realize that what she was doing was wrong, and she ended the relationship with Alex. The writers clearly wanted to suggest that she had learned something from her experiences, as she told Alex, “You’re the first person who’s made me want [a proper relationship].” Whether that relationship is likely to be with a woman or a man is left unanswered. Although I have used the word “bisexual” to discuss Jessica here, the B-word was never actually used in the show, as seems often to be the case in TV shows dealing with sexually ambiguous women. (A recent example would be Cashmere Mafia , where Caitlin tells Alicia, “I don’t really care if I’m gay or I’m straight,” apparently unaware that there could be any other label that might fit her.)
When discussing her explorations with women, Jessica’s friends immediately ask her if she’s “going lesbian,” never even bringing up the possibility of bisexuality. The automatic labelling of any female same-sex explorations as “going lesbian” (and any return to men as “going straight”) contributes to the invisibility of bisexual women on TV and supports the false assumption that everyone must “really” be one thing or the other.
In many other ways, though, the show provided a refreshingly angst-free and matter-of-fact representation of a queer female character. There was the fact that Jessica’s essential drama didn’t really revolve around the question of her sexual orientation; it was actually about whether she was going to allow herself to fall in love and consider the possibility of a serious monogamous relationship with someone. That story arc could just as easily have belonged to a heterosexual character.
There was also the fact that Jessica’s three friends were so accepting of her immediately, with Siobhan even admitting that she had had a lesbian experience herself when she was younger. While Trudi, the most straitlaced of the four, was discomfited by the idea of kissing a girl, there was never any question of her ceasing to love Jessica as a friend.
Additionally, although Jessica was not identified on Mistresses as South Asian, she was played by Anglo-Indian actress Shelley Conn. The only other recent lesbian/bi character to be played by a South Asian actress on TV was Meera Syal’s detective, Miranda, on the BBC’s Jekyll.
While L Word actress Janina Gavankar is Indo-Dutch, her character, Papi, was Latina, which raised a host of other issues around race. Even though Jessica’s last name is Fraser, thereby indicating that the part probably wasn’t written specifically for a South Asian actress, casting Conn in the role certainly raises the profile of lesbian/bi women of color on television.
Perhaps most interesting of all was the arc of Jessica’s relationship with her married boss, Simon (Adam Astill). While presented as a bit of a twit (he refers to Alex and Lisa as “the rug-munchers,” and at their civil partnership ceremony asks Jessica, “So when does the drunken girl-on-girl action start?”), he was essentially amiable and difficult to dislike. Once he realizes that Jessica is no longer interested in him, he backs off and then arranges for her to bump into Alex.
In the last episode, when Alex is busy with Lisa and unable to meet Jessica for her birthday as promised, Simon turns up to provide platonic comfort for Jessica, leading her to state a touch sarcastically: “All right, fine. You can be my fag hag.” The affinity between gay men and straight women has become a staple of pop culture, but it is still unusual to see a similar friendship represented between a queer woman and a straight man.The BBC has not yet announced whether Mistresses will be renewed for a second series, and part of the uncertainty reportedly centers on the fact that two of the actors (Sarah Parish and Sharon Small, who play Katie and Trudi) are due to give birth just when filming might resume. Also,
Anna Torv (who played Alex) has been cast as the female lead in J.J. Abrams’ new sci-fi show, Fringe, possibly limiting her potential involvement in a second series of Mistresses. If it does return, hopefully its positive and complex portrayal of Jessica will continue.
Mistresses is available on DVD in the U.K. Visit the show’s official site for further information.
