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 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 sucker punches Anne with the announcement of Mariana's engagement to Charles, an older wealthy landowner.
This work provides examples of:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
