This week I'm looking at some examples of the ways that shows introduce characters.
One of the most common problems with pilots is that the protagonist ends up passive. Either the writer has either framed the arc of the pilot in terms of one big decision the protagonist needs to make, and the ep is them struggling to make just that one decision; or, they love the protagonist too much and end up protecting them from having to do anything difficult; or they're just not clear yet on who their protagonist is.
An audience learns who a character is and comes to want more by the choices they make. The bolder or more risky the choices, the more invested we become.
I know of no better example of how to do this well than the pilot of Sally Wainwright’s GENTLEMAN JACK. From the moment we meet her, protagonist Anne Lister is making big choices. In fact she's doing so even before we know we've met her: in the scene in which she's introduced, our first look is at a carriage filled with passengers that is hurtling down a city street so fast some of the passengers are crying out.
A hired man waiting for it reacts with horror at the sight of the driver before we see that it is in fact Anne, who apparently took over driving the carriage after the man hired for the job was injured.
That one moment tells us everything we need to know about Anne: She'll take on any task fearlessly; she moves fast, probably too fast; and she is constantly being looked at and judged by others.
Before we meet her in this scene we have an entire sequence with her family talking about her, and giving us the very same impressions of her as someone who is talented, decisive, restless and the constant object of everyone else's attention.
(I'm sure there are examples, but I can't think of an occasion in which introducing a character by way of others' comments or reactions didn't prove to be a useful choice. You build up a sense of mystery and suspense about the character, and at the same time you reveal much about those reacting. We understand so much of Anne's relationship with her family before they've ever onscreen together -- her aunt's devotion, her uncle's skepticism and her sister Mary's general exhaustion.)
And again, all of this is just Anne's first scene. Over the next 50 minutes she'll make as many big, risky choices, as some TV protagonists might make in a season: she'll visit the family accountant, get a report on the estate, then hire someone new when she likes their ideas; collect rents herself, though she is a woman, and stand up to one tenant who threatens her and throw another out for good. Queer herself, she has sex with her former lover, who thinks she needs to get married to a man to protect herself, then flirts with a young woman who comes to visit, throws out the doctor who annoys her, shoots a horse that has to be put down, talks directly to us into camera and from start to finish dresses in the style of a man.
Anne's also often shot from behind, walking as fast as she possibly can, as here when she first enters the family estate. It’s like we the audience are drafting on her speed, like we can’t keep up ourselves. It makes her seem iconic, bigger than life – a force unto herself.
Beyond defining her and making her the object of our fascination, giving Anne lots of bold choices from the start also becomes a way of grounding the story that is to come in her. Too often in a script you’ll see what amounts to Plot by Coincidence; something unrelated to anything the character has said or done sets things in motion or complicates the character’s journey. The story to come may still be plenty strong, but usually it feels unmoored in a way, or worse, like a writer's cheat.
When you allow a character big choices, you allow the story to unspool much more organically. Big choices inevitably have big consequences, and the character in a way becomes their own source of complication.
Big character choices; the reactions and gossip of others; and consideration of the cinematography of her presentation, aka the decision to shoot her so often from behind and very much on the move: all great techniques used by Sally Wainwright to establish character in GENTLEMAN JACK.
When it comes to introducing characters, Wainwright is truly a master. Tomorrow I'm going to look at another one of her shows, HAPPY VALLEY.
