Dope Girls uses historical fiction to tell the story of what happened in London at the end of World War I that resulted in the nightclub scene in Soho. Wild parties, drugs, booze, and all kinds of debauchery were big business.

Dope Girls starts with men coming home from the war taking back the jobs that women had filled in their absence. The main character, Kate Galloway (Julianne Nicholson), lost her job and then her husband hung himself. She was left homeless. She took her teen aged daughter Evie (Eilidh Fisher) to London in search of work.

Kate and Evie showed up on the doorstep of Billie Cassidy (Umi Myers). Billie let them in but we don’t learn why at first. Billie and her boyfriend Eddie (Michael Duke) were both entertainers in a nightclub run by the Salucci family. The Salucci family ran Soho and most of the clubs.

Violet Davies (Eliza Scanlen) was desperate to become a police officer. She had to get creative to get there.

These four women characters were at the center of the story.

Billie took Kate to work at her club. After a confrontation over money, Kate killed Billie’s boss, Silvio Salucci (Sebastian Croft). She took all his cash, and covered up her crime completely. She decided to open her own nightclub when she saw the amount of cash that came in each night where Billie worked.

The obstacle for Violet getting into the police department was Sgt. Turner (Ian Bonar). He’d give her the job and then take it away. He forced her to go undercover in a nightclub where she became acquainted with Kate and Billie.

The obstacle for Kate was all the Salucci clan. Older brothers Luca (Rory Fleck Byrne) and Damasco (Dustin Demri-Burns) were after her. The family matriarch (Geraldine James) was also ruthless. Kate had to pay them protection money to open her club.

There were six episodes in the series, which first aired on the BBC. There was a lot happening in every episode, with plenty of character development as things progressed. Each of the main characters had a specific arc, which made the events of the plot move along while building an appreciation for what they were going through.

The most striking thing about Dope Girls was the edgy aesthetic. Everything looked old and grimy. The scribbly font used for the title was used constantly to put little quips and comments on the screen. The characters screamed in frustration and anger, shooting scribbles out of their mouths like sound waves that turned into words.

I liked the music. The scene where Eddie sang a song made famous by Billie Holiday while men jeered at him from the audience for being queer was particularly moving.

The historical aspects of the story described how the nightclub owners and the police worked together to ignore the bacchanal scene in Soho every night while raking in the cash. At first Kate wanted her club to be classy with artistic performances from Billie and Eddie and only booze for sale. When the Salucci men barged in one night selling red packets of cocaine and Kate saw the amount of money involved, she changed her mind.

We don’t often see stories about this period in history, the time between the two world wars. This series tried extra hard to be cute and clever in the way it told the story even though it involved murder, bribery, blackmail, and theft. The points were made, however, especially when you see where the characters end up in relation to one another.

Miranda Bowen and Shannon Murphy did all the directing. I thought it was interesting and worth watching. You can see it on Hulu.