TOP REASONS TO WATCH JERICHO
A WESTERN TOLD FROM A WOMAN'S PERSPECTIVE
In JERICHO, set during the Industrial Revolution, Jessica Raine has found what she’s looking for. A kind of English western, Jericho tells the story of the shanty town that springs up around the construction of a railway viaduct in 1870s Yorkshire. Raine plays Annie, a widow with teenage children, forced to scrape a living by taking in rough-house lodgers who work on the line. The role of an impoverished Victorian widow was hard for Jessica to research. “It really illuminates how much women have been written out of history,” says Raine. Annie is reserved and taciturn, her emotions playing out across Raine’s expressive face as life in Jericho takes dark turns, including violence, betrayal and sabotage. “She’s clearly really vulnerable but suppressing all of that in order to cope. I really like that” says the actor. “It’s got a bit of grit to it – a frontier town rising from the dust, a woman surviving against all odds and a cracking thriller, too."