Okay, the U.K. isn’t usually where we colonists look for Westerns, but the Brits have come up with a crackling good one in Jericho, which arrives here Monday [July 11] on Acorn TV.
Jericho, not to be confused with the cult U.S. series from 2006, is an eight-episode drama about a woman named Annie Quaintain (Jessica Raine) who must haul herself and her two children to a rough-and-rowdy railroad camp in 1870s Yorkshire.
There’s a little Deadwood here, a little Hell on Wheels. It may be set in Britain, but it’s a Western, and the tension is universal. Annie must, in short, find a way to survive.
Her problem is that her husband died, sweeping away the comfortable society life she and the teenage children – Martha (Amy James-Kelly) and George (Samuel Bottomley) – had been living in the city.
Turns out hubby was financing it all with empty schemes. By the time Annie has repaid his debts, which requires her to sell the house, she and the kids are literally on the street.
The eviction is the opening scene of the series, and Raine does a brilliant job of making us care about what will happen next. Annie isn’t warm and fuzzy, but she’s focused and determined at a moment when her whole life has just fallen apart.
The family’s only immediate option is hopping a train to Jericho, an outpost that has sprung up for workers building an enormous bridge for the new cross-country rail system.
There isn’t much elegance in Jericho. Annie and the family move into a house where she can pay the rent and earn some money by taking in lodgers.
Naturally the lodgers are an interesting bunch, notably Johnny Jackson (Hans Matheson, right). He’s a handsome young lad with a mysterious past, and if you suspect there will be a “will they/won’t they” between Johnny and Annie, well, you wouldn’t be the only one.
Johnny seems like a basically nice guy. The same isn’t true for all the other characters in camp, and there isn’t nearly enough law and order to keep things in line.
Soon a minor incident involving Johnny and another worker escalates into a major incident, and by random chance Annie’s son gets drawn into it.
This sets up the primary drama of the series, as Annie struggles to protect her family while maintaining some personal sense of honor and integrity.
Meanwhile, Jericho also takes the time to note the visceral details of the life she’s now living – like how, sometimes, she’s just plain tired.
While the setting is worlds removed from Downton Abbey, which ironically was also set in Yorkshire, Jericho has a rough visual beauty. In one early scene, Annie describes for her children how she envisions the house in which they could one day live again, with elegant rooms and lawns and gardens.
One of the most striking elements of Jericho, not surprisingly, is watching this classic Western tale spool out from the perspective of a woman. Annie isn’t talking feminism, but in a real sense she’s living it, and by extension we also get ongoing insights into the world of the women around her.
It’s a tale well told.
Acorn, which specializes in importing series from overseas, can be found at www.acorn.tv.