‘Dope Girls’: BBC Lines Up Bad Wolf Drama About Female Crime Boss In Soho’s Criminal Underworld
20.03.2023 - 15:23
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: The BBC is delving into the history of Soho’s criminal underworld for its next big-budget drama series.
Dope Girls will be a six-part series from His Dark Materials producer Bad Wolf Productions for BBC One.
Our sources say the BBC sees Dope Girls as a spiritual successor to Peaky Blinders, and Bad Wolf is understood to be in early stage discussions with U.S. co-production partners and global streaming services.
Polly Stenham (The Face, The Neon Demon) and Alex Warren (Eleanor) are writing Dope Girls, which is inspired by Marek Kohn’s non-fiction book Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground.
Full plot details haven’t been revealed but we understand it follows the birth of the nightclub scene in London’s Soho. The series will mix elements of the fact-based research of Kohn’s book with fictional characters and storylines, exploring all aspects of the criminal world of Soho in the early 20th Century.
We hear it’s partly based on the true story of conservative, god-fearing 42-year old single mother Kate Meyrick, who builds a nightclub empire and criminal family enterprise and becomes the most dangerous woman in London as well as a competitor to Brilliant Chang, the baron of Soho’s gritty underworld.
Her nightclubs are fuelled by drugs and alcohol that allow for a generation of World War I veterans and survivors to forget their trauma and break through the rigid patriarchal structures of the era to allow women to dance, have sex and do drugs with whoever they want.
Filming is set to begin later this year and casting will be revealed in due course.
Stenham and Warren will be executive producers alongside Bad Wolf’s Kate Crowther and Jane Tranter, and Michael Lesslie (Assassin’s Creed) is also an