Dope and glory
DQ visits the Welsh town of Bridgend to find a television studio transformed into 1918 London for Dope Girls, a BBC series based on the real experiences of the women living – and surviving – in Soho’s illicit world of illegal nightclubs.
On stage in a dark, decadent, yet deeply alluring nightclub, a dancer called Billie thrusts and writhes to the beat. She is gyrating in a barely-there cone bikini, fitted with bunches of fake bananas. It’s Josephine Baker meets Beyoncé.
Her provocative, spellbinding dance is sending the already frenzied audience bananas. It is a typically steamy night at The 33 Club, the hottest venue in 1918 Soho.
But this wonderfully atmospheric occasion is not taking place in Soho just after the First World War. Rather, it is happening today, 169 miles away from central London, on a meticulously created set at a modern-day TV studio in Bridgend, South Wales.
As hedonistic, degenerate and enticing as anything Cabaret could throw up, The 33 Club is the captivating central location of Dope Girls. Produced by Bad Wolf in association with Sony Pictures Television for BBC One and BBC iPlayer, this six-part series conjures up a forgotten period in history.
During the First World War, women had to take on many of the roles traditionally filled by men. Dope Girls portrays the post-war era when women strove to continue playing a dominant part. It shows a time when “sisters were doing it for themselves.”
Created and written by multi-award-winning writer Polly Stenham (That Face, Julie, Neon Demon) and Alex Warren (Eleanor), the drama is based on Marek Kohn’s 1992 book, Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground.
Inspired by the real-life experiences of Soho nightclub owners Kate Mayrick and Billie Carleton, the drama uses fictionalised characters to depict an era when large swathes of the West End of London were run by female crime bosses. They ruled the clubs, the drugs and the moonshine rackets.
Dope Girls stars Julianne Nicholson (Mare of Easttown) as Kate Galloway, a widowed single mother. Impoverished in the countryside, she moves to Soho and sets up a nightclub in the midst of the bacchanalian tumult of post-First World War London.
Turning to crime to support her daughters, Evie (Eilidh Fisher, The Power) and Billie (Umi Myers), Kate is thumbing her nose at the pompous male authority figures who pontificate that “vice will not be tolerated.” At the same, Metropolitan Police officer Violet Davies (Eliza Scanlen, Little Women) is sent undercover to probe the world of illegal clubs.
Made with a very modern sensibility, the drama is enlivened by a compelling yet anachronistic rock soundtrack and captions scrawled across the screen. Dope Girls is debauched, dissolute and down and dirty – but in a good way.
Shannon Murphy, the drama’s director, outlines the feel she is aiming for: “I want to really focus on character and the feelings that the women were having after all the men had come back from the First World War. The women had stepped into their positions and were feeling really powerful and in leadership roles, when the men came back and wanted them to just go back to their place.”
Dope Girls, the director continues, “is an expression of the women wanting to bust out and reclaim their territory. The drama also shows the real creative boom that was happening at the time in the nightclub world.
“I wanted the audience to experience what that would feel like. The way we did that was with an explosion of colour and energy. At the time, everyone felt like they were being really progressive and bursting out of their usual mould.”
That eruption of creativity is reflected in the costumes from designer Sophie Canale. “I like breaking the rules. So it’s an exciting opportunity to get a role like this where everyone is trying to push the boundaries,” Canale says. “There was a particular image that I wanted to really break boundaries with and it was with Billie’s character wearing the Josephine Baker-inspired cone bikini. Being able to put that in and tweak the design, but take that as inspiration – it’s just really punchy and emphasises how bold the show really is.”
In fact, Canale has forged an alternative look for all the characters in Dope Girls. “When we slowly go into the club world, you get this essence of all the bohemians, the artisans and the dancers. I really wanted to show that in the costumes,” she says. “There’s a lot of fun and charm in there. We all know Soho has lots of stories and secrets behind closed doors. It’s about bringing those out into the world.”
Why did nightclubs flourish in Soho in the wake of the war, then? Jane Tranter, executive producer of Dope Girls and CEO of Bad Wolf, puts the drama in historical context: “The result of the First World War ending was that London hosted the biggest party the country had ever seen. Everybody piled into London, Trafalgar Square and Soho specifically, to have a party that went on for days. That turned into weeks, and eventually months.
“During that time, a record number of night clubs sprang up in Soho. 158 night clubs all jostled together in Soho, opening up to support the men returning home from the war. There was the feel of a party.”
Tranter, who also has credits on hit dramas including Succession, Doctor Who, His Dark Materials and The Night Of, continues: “Partly, the men were partying to escape what they’d been through and wanting to lose their minds rather than return to the battlefields that were still existing within them. And partly, the men wanted to celebrate life because they’d escaped death.
“The women in Dope Girls are there in order to make money from the men’s return. Law and order was chaotic. So the world of Dope Girls, the world of Soho in 1918, is a melting pot of all the ingredients you would need to have the best and the worst party of your life.”
The drama also depicts the sense of liberation that women experienced in the aftermath of the war. “The role of women in society really changed during the war period,” says fellow EP Kate Crowther. “There weren’t the men physically available to do things, so women worked outside of the home for the first time and, as a result, had certain freedoms. This then spilled over after the end of the war.”
“One of the main themes of Dope Girls is what it was like for women in 1918 London and how women can find their voice,” Tranter agrees. “In the first episode alone, we see our four main characters being metaphorically or literally silenced by the men and the culture around them. One of the things that happens over the six episodes of Dope Girls is that we see the women’s fight to find their voices and be heard.”
She adds: “The women are operating in a way that usually you would expect men to operate. They are not only operating in that way, but they are also winning that way. It gives the drama a surprisingly different and arresting tone.”
That’s not the only way in which Dope Girls, which began on BBC One on Saturday and is available on BBC iPlayer, differs from most period dramas. As Tranter observes, “it’s seen through the prism of four women, whereas normally the 1918 post-war era is seen through the prism of men. Also, it’s told in an area of nightclubs and bohemian, artistic life in London. Usually, this period is told in stately homes.”
She continues: “Everything is truthful and authentic to the period, but the attitude of how the actors perform, the attitude of how the costumes are cut, the attitude in how the set decoration is put into place feel utterly modern. That highly researched and authentic period feel, combined with that highly modern attitude, creates a whole vision to Dope Girls that feels radically different to anything else we’ve seen.”
There is one last point of difference: the way the female characters walk. “They walk with a swagger,” Tranter remarks. “They do not have that timidity or that caution that characters in period dramas often have. Our women have a modernity to them. They strut down those Soho streets like they’re Kate Moss or Marianne Faithfull.”
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tagged in: Alex Warren, Bad Wold, BBC, Dope Girls, Jane Tranter, Julianne Nicholson, Kate Crowther, Polly Stenham, Shannon Murphy, Sony Pictures Television, Sophie Canale