The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister

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The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister was a one-off BBC drama that aired in May 2010. The title character was a Victorian industrialist and businesswoman and is considered to be the first modern lesbian. The programme mostly details her affair with her relationship with her girlfriend, Mariana and her ex/best friend, Tib. Things don't get off to a good start, since after the exposition the plot the sucker punches Anne with the announcement of Mariana's engagement to Charles, an older wealthy landowner.

Tropes used in The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister include:

• Bifauxnen: Anne.
• Compressed Adaptation: The scriptwriter commented that to fully adapt all of Anne's diaries to TV would require a ten episode series, but the commission was only for ninety minutes.
• Death of the Hypotenuse: Anne and Mariana eagerly await the death of Charles so that they can be together.
• Friends with Benefits: Anne and Tib's relationship develops into this, although Tib is tired of being relegated to Just Friends.
• Innocent Cohabitation: Anne plans to invoke this so that she and Mariana can live together.
• Last Girl Wins: Ann.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Mariana.
• My Own Private I Do: Anne and Ann's wedding, for obvious reasons.
• One Steve Limit: Averted with Anne and Ann, since Real Life Wrote The Plot, although the different spellings make it a little easier to distinguish between the two.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Tib.
• So Happy Together: Unusually, they manage to do this twice. First with the very start of the programme and again before the Second Act Breakup.
• What Could Have Been: Anne and Ann's wedding seems to smack of what could have been between Anne and Mariana.