Dope Girls

I started off quite expecting some female led criminal gangsterism. At first I just found it unbelievable. After a while I just started treating it as a farce and from then on found it quite amusing. The anachronisms are just laughable. In the knock out female police cadets there are two non white applicants. There would be no black female police officers for another fifty years! Wpcs until relatively recently were restricted to ferrying children about and being with distressed women. Completely different from today when female cops are just regular cops. The atmosphere in the clubs and private party was nothing if not contemporary! The entire notion of this being shortly after WW1 is farcical! Nothing of the period is accurate in the slightest. Having now seen all six episodes I can say that is a shameful waste of a decent cast and shed loads of money. The dialogue is painful. The main character Kate Galloway seems to have been on strike! She's supposed to a tough ruthless woman but when someone speaks to her she just stares gormlessly into space! The story line is repetitive and I've seen enough satin underwear to last me a lifetime. I fear there may be a second season. I'll give it a miss..

A bit freaky and dark. Sex drugs and rock and roll in post WWI. Everyone is unhinged. There is a blend of realism with artistic licence IE hyper stylistically quasi fantasy. Even to the point of modernising the characters rather than reimagined them as quaint and 'so in the past'. The first episode seems to focus on character woes and opposites... We are clearly set up to see a rise of the abused and tossed aside women into forces to be reckoned with. For me personally it could tone down the artsy stylistic liberties and 'keep it real, yo' a bit more. But as of eps 1 I will tune in further. I gave it a 7 but it was close to an 8.

Shame, really, I like Julianne Nicholson in most things she has appeared in but whatever possessed her to appear in this latest piece of BBC revisionist historical based drama is unclear. Have attention spans sunk so low in today's generation that the commissioners at Bonkers Broadcasting Corporation keep producing tick box dramas that pay no attention to entertaining fact based well written thought through storylines with acting that doesn't always try to be weird or shocking and direction that doesn't leave the viewer confused or disorientated in trying to follow it. Also, the sound quality was shocking as was confirmed by the fact that to listen to it comprehensively the volume had to be turned up high and then quickly turned down again when the conclusion was followed by a trailer for Match Of The Day. Another disappointing failure in the long line of terrible BBC big budget drama shows of the last decade. Stop trying to get down wif da yoof and cater for people who actually watch television.

Dope Girls is a fantastic dramatic and complex styling of smart, strong women in deeply repressed brutal environment. It brings dramatic tension to new levels. Hypnotic primitive soundtrack. And an unnerving and uncanny ability to make the existential stories of a past time resonate with contemporary women's experience.

An excellent drama, with a totally fascinating storyline, great acting and superb dialogue. It manages to be both colourful and murky at the same time. 'Dope Girls' goes some way to blowing away the cobwebs left by the usual stodgy (3 episodes before anything much happens) old TV thrillers. It doesn't have to be factual - it's got a damned good plot. It's hard to pick out one performance ahead of the others; they're all believable and well-rounded. There are scenes that are a bit raunchy but, given the plot and the grim reality of the lives on show here, it's not 'sexy'. I liked the parallel drawn between the obviously villainous and wicked crime family and the obnoxious exploits of the police. Even the central female characters are flawed - there really are no 'good guys'. Having said all that, it's not a 'depressed-fest'. A lot of the camera work is stunning and imaginative, and, as they used to say in the sixties quite 'trippy'!