Honeysuckle Weeks to play Jem Flockhart?

Surgery was brutal and undertaken without either anesthetic or antiseptic, organs sliced and pickled in formaldehyde in backstreet labs, bodies boiled in copper cauldrons – the world of medical science in the 19th Century was not for the weak of stomach or faint of heart.

Elaine Thomson used her study on the social history of medicine as the inspiration for a series of acclaimed novels. The first two of these have now been optioned by the television production company behind the current primetime hit, The Durrells.

"Sid Gentle Productions have optioned them and are working on getting a writer to adapt them for the screen,” Elaine Thomson recounts, “They showed an interest as soon as the first in the series, Beloved Poison, was released and convinced me to sign on the dotted line [Source]."

Her rather gruesome thrillers feature Victorian apothecary Jem Flockhart, a woman who has to roam around disguised as a man. "I wanted someone complex and flawed, and also a female protagonist, but didn’t know how I could have a woman to be everywhere and say whatever she wanted in the 19th Century, so I decided to disguise her as a man."

So, who would be able to portray Jem Flockhart?

My choice would be Honeysuckle Weeks. She has an instantly recognizable face. Her own description of it is “period” meaning that she seems to pick up a lot of roles set in the past [Source].

Her slender body is perfectly suited to hide the femininity and to play Jem Flockhart who dashes through the Victorian underworld filled with medical men with murder in their hearts.

I have taken the liberty of alerting Sid Gentle Productions to Honeysuckle Weeks.