If you were wondering how Suranne Jones could follow her blistering, BAFTA-winning performance in Doctor Foster, look no further: the first trailer for her new BBC/HBO period drama Gentleman Jack has been released, and it looks like a cracker.

Jones stars in the eight-part biographical historical series as Anne Lister, a Victorian landowner who spent many years running her family's historic Yorkshire home, Shibden Hall. Lister wasn't just notable for being a hands-on estate manager, which would have been deemed a "man's job" at the time, but also for having same-sex relationships in an era when these would have been virtually unthinkable.

Lister wrote about her personal and professional life in a series of partly-coded diaries which were published in the 1980s. She's been hailed as "the first modern lesbian." In the trailer, we see Jones' Lister behaving in ways which cause local townspeople to raise their eyebrows: she fights, she plays cards, she becomes romantically involved with another woman.

Check it out below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gce44fIgV3g

Based on Lister's diaries, Gentleman Jack has been created by Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax), who also serves as one of its directors. Sophie Rundle (Peaky Blinders co-stars as Lister's lover, while The Killing's Sofie Gråbøl appears towards the end of the series as the Queen of Denmark.

The impressive ensemble cast also includes Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, Timothy West (Last Tango in Halifax), Gemma Jones (God’s Own Country, Bridget Jones’s Diary), Stephanie Cole (Waiting for God), Happy Valley's Amelia Bullmore and Vincent Franklin, Dino Fetscher (Humans), and Katherine Kelly (Class).

Gentleman Jack debuts on HBO in the U.S. on April 22. In the U.K., it will air on BBC One this spring at a date to be confirmed.

What do you think of the Gentleman Jack trailer?