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Dope Girls: BBC Drama Focuses on Female Gangsters in 1918 London Soho

Inspired by the Marek Cohn book, Dope Girls is a new BBC drama about female gangsters in London's Soho in 1918 starring Julianne Nicholson.

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Dope Girls is a new six-part BBC crime drama inspired by the book by Marek Kohn, a forgotten time in history. It is the end of World War I. As Britain celebrates the Armistice on the streets of London, men return from the front expecting to rejoin society and pick up where they left off – but a newly empowered generation of women are loath to simply return to the kitchen. Using Soho's expanding illicit underground clubland scene as their playground, women explore previously unimaginable opportunities on either side of the law. Dope Girls depicts in visceral, delicious detail the birth of the modern nightlife industry guided and gilded by female gangsters.

Dope Girls:
"Dope Girls" key art: BBC

Created by playwright Polly Stenham and Alex Warren, with Killing Eve veteran Shannon Murphy as lead director and executive producer, Dope Girls features Julianne Nicholson plays Kate Galloway, a single mother who establishes a nightclub amidst the hedonistic uproar of post-World War One London, embracing a life of criminal activities with the dedicated aim of providing for her daughter Evie, played by Eilidh Fisher (The Power). Eliza Scanlen plays Violet Davies, one of the first wave of female officers, who is assigned to go undercover and investigate the illicit world of underground Soho nightclubs. This is where we find Billie Cassidy, played by Umi Myers (Bob Marley: One Love), a dazzling bohemian dancer whose life is irrevocably changed by Kate's arrival.

Dope Girls:
"Dope Girls" still: BBC

Nicholson shared, "It goes back to when I got the pilot script and read it. Polly Stenham put in this quote by Viv Albertine, who's from this punk rock band called The Slits. This quote is: 'Bad girls aren't villains, they're transgressive forces within patriarchal cultures, when made to choose between wreaking destruction or accepting their powerlessness, they choose destruction."

Also starring in the series, which was filmed in Wales, are Michael Duke, Ian Bonar, Dustin Demri-Burns, Geraldine James, Nabhaan Rizwan, Priya Kansara, Jordan Kouamé, Will Keen, and Sebastian Croft. Miranda Bowen, also from Killing Eve, directed later episodes. Directors of Photography include Annika Summerson and Carlos Catalan, while Sherree Philips (Babyteeth) is the production designer. Ado Yoshizaki Cassuto serves as producer. Dope Girls is produced by Bad Wolf (His Dark Materials, Industry, I Hate Suzie, Doctor Who, A Discovery of Witches – so stop saying the only thing they have is Doctor Who) in association with Sony Pictures Television for BBC iPlayer and BBC One. It is now on BBC iPlayer in the UK and will be coming to a US streamer at a later date.

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Adi TantimedhAbout Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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