Dope Girls writer: 'Real history is more extreme than what's in the show'
The BBC period drama is set after the end of the First World War.
At the start of each episode of Dope Girls, a title card reminds viewers that while "this drama is inspired by a forgotten time in history", it is the case that "all events and characters are fictional".
The series, which follows a group of women establishing an illicit nightclub in 1918 after the end of the First World War, is nominally based on Marek Kohn's non-fiction book Dope Girls: The Birth Of The British Drug Underground.
However, executive producer Jane Tranter has explained that's not the only source for the programme, saying at a recent Q&A: "Quite often what happens when you make a drama is that you look to a number of different pieces of source material to use in order to create your drama.
"What [writers] Alex [Warren] and Polly [Stenham] did was a fictional piece that was based on a number of different pieces of reading that they'd done, of which Dope Girls had most comprehensive breadth in explaining what that period of time was like, and it had the coolest title. And so that's why we optioned Dope Girls.
"But the piece is based on the results of Alex and Polly's imaginations, and very marvellous they are too."
Meanwhile, Warren said of his and Stenham's writing process: "[The book is] a non-fiction account of the time, of what was happening in Soho, and all the colourful characters that were there.
"And reading that book, we were inspired by some of those characters, but I guess our imaginations ran with it a little bit.
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"Polly's a very old friend of mine, and we wanted to find something to work on together. And she had originally come across the Dope Girls book years before. And then when we decided to work on something together, given our background of nights in Soho, it seemed quite a fitting project.
"So we went to the National Archives, which is an extraordinary place out near Kew where you go and they give you gloves to go through all the old police records and leafing through old paper.
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"And so that was amazing to read about some of the real people and what they got up to, and honestly, the things that they did make our world now seem so boring and kind of tame by comparison. More extreme things than we could ever even put in a BBC show."
The drama stars Julianne Nicholson, Eliza Scanlen, Umi Myers and Eilidh Fisher amongst others, and alongside its nightclub plotline also focuses on the introduction of female officers to the London Metropolitan Police.
Dope Girls will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 9:15pm on Saturday 22nd February 2025.
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Authors
James Hibbs is a Drama Writer for Radio Times, covering programmes across both streaming platforms and linear channels. He previously worked in PR, first for a B2B agency and subsequently for international TV production company Fremantle. He possesses a BA in English and Theatre Studies and an NCTJ Level 5 Diploma in Journalism.
