Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Last week the Met Police voiced their opposition to the planned opening of a new jazz bar in Soho on the grounds that it could “add to crime, disorder and public nuisance”. In a strange coincidence, a major new BBC drama prominently features a moral crusade led by Scotland Yard against late-night music venues in London’s central entertainment district. This series, though, is set in 1918 — a time when jazz clubs were rife with illicit activities and not just criminally overpriced cocktails.A heavily stylised descent into post-first world war Britain’s murky underworld, the six-part Dope Girls has been billed as a “spiritual successor to Peaky Blinders”. But while the latter was a testosterone-fuelled affair, Dope Girls revolves around a group of ambitious women who seek their fortune in a part of town where laws are broken and societal norms are transgressed. Here women pushed out of work by returning soldiers find that they can be their own boss.The show is perhaps more comparable to Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s just-released A Thousand Blows, a Victorian-set drama on Disney+ that chronicles the rise of the real-life, all-female Forty Elephants gang as part of a broader East End saga. Dope Girls likewise features characters inspired by historical figures such as Kate Meyrick, owner of notorious nightclubs-cum-drug dens frequented by bohemians and frequently targeted by the police.When we first meet the fictionalised Kate Galloway (Julianne Nicholson), she is a newly widowed housewife, left with nothing but debts and a teenager to look after. Desperate for work, she reaches out to Billie (Umi Myers), a daughter she gave up in another life, who now pushes cocaine in a seedy Soho club.The two women quickly go from estranged parent and child to partners in crime when an opportunity to steal from Billie’s manager — a scion of the notorious Salucci crime family — presents itself. An impromptu cash-grab soon turns into a daring venture, as Kate and Billie use the money to open a jazz bar on the Saluccis’ turf.Dovetailing with Kate’s story is that of Violet (Eliza Scanlen), a recent recruit at the Met who is sent undercover to spy on Soho’s newest insalubrious establishment. Inexperienced and in danger, she at least finds relief from the boys’ club of Scotland Yard among Galloway’s girls. While its sexual politics clearly have a contemporary resonance, the show is also driven by an anarchic spirit and captures the heady atmosphere of the period. But the visual flair and fine production and costume design don’t fully distract from some rather sketchy, occasionally cartoonish characterisations and uneven pacing — issues that may yet be resolved in its second half. As it is, Dope Girls is often intoxicating but not quite strong enough to get you hooked.★★★☆☆On BBC1 and iPlayer from February 22 at 9.15pm. New episodes weekly
