All to know on new BBC historical drama Dope Girls starring Julianne Nicholson
A new historical drama will be airing on the BBC very soon which will have a central cast including Julianne Nicholson and Eliza Scanlen.
Dope Girls was created by Polly Stenham and Alex Warren while Shannon Murphy serves as the show's lead director and an executive producer.
Set in Soho, London, in 1918 it will take a look at a group of women who set up a nightclub and embrace a new criminal lifestyle.
A synopsis for the show says: "It is the end of World War One. As Britain celebrates the Armistice on the streets of London, men return from the front expecting to rejoin society and pick up where they left off - but a newly empowered generation of women are loath to simply return to the kitchen.
"Using Soho's expanding illicit underground clubland scene as their playground, women explore previously unimaginable opportunities on either side of the law."
The Radio Times adds: "The six-part series stars Julianne Nicholson as Kate Galloway, a woman who, at the end of the First World War, finds her life crumbling down around her.
"In order to protect her daughter Evie (Eilidh Fisher), she joins forces with bohemian dancer Billie Cassidy (Umi Myers) and sets up a nightclub in 1918 Soho.
"As she embraces her new criminal lifestyle, Kate finds herself the target of not only some unsavoury figures, but also the police. This includes Violet Davies (Eliza Scanlen), a troubled individual and one of the first wave of female officers."
Discussing the show with the BBC, Nicholson said: "I hope something that resonates for people is the idea of inclusion.
"This idea that Kate has for her club where anyone can come together, regardless of race, class, gender or politics. I love the sort of acceptance the show is made with."
📺 "I hope that nobody takes any of these Dope Girls as role models..." Get ready to meet a newly empowered generation of women on the Soho streets of 1918. Dope Girls starts Saturday 22 February on @BBCiPlayer and @BBCOne Interviews ➡️ https://t.co/i1A83xlj5t pic.twitter.com/cee51P2BXK
— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) February 18, 2025
Julianne Nicholson as Kate Galloway
Eliza Scanlen as Violet Davies
Umi Myers as Billie Cassidy
Eilidh Fisher as Evie Galloway
Geraldine James as Isabella Salucci
Anna Crilly as Anne Sanders
Sebastian Croft as Silvio Salucci
Rory Fleck Byrne as Luca Salucci
Dustin Demri-Burns as Damaso Salucci
Eben Figueiredo as Matteo Rossi Salucci
Michael Duke as Eddie Cobb
Ian Bonar as Sgt Frank Turner
Nabhaan Rizwan as Silas Huxley
Priya Kansara as Lily Lee
Jordan Kouamé as Reggie Regbo
Eloise Thomas as Alice Asquith-Gore
Will Keen as Frederick Asquith-Gore
Fiona Button as Sophie Asquith-Gore
Harry Cadby as Jimmy Conville
Samson Ajewole as Walter Daniels
Julian Lewis Jones as John Campbell
Steven Elder as James Galloway
Recommended reading:
Everything you need to know about A Thousand Blows starring Stephen Graham
Everything to know on Unforgotten series 6 starring Sanjeev Bhaskar
All to know on Waterloo Road series 15 with Lindsey Coulson among new cast
The first episode of Dope Girls will air at 9.15pm on BBC One on Saturday, February 22.
After that, the second episode will be broadcast at 9.20pm on the same channel on Saturday, March 1.
The remaining four episodes will air in a similar timeslot on Saturdays.
Alternatively, all episodes will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer from Saturday, February 22.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Marcel Ophuls, maker of The Sorrow and the Pity, which examined French collaboration with the Nazis
Marcel Ophuls, who has died aged 97, was a German-born documentary-maker who fled his homeland in the 1930s and spent much of his career interrogating the various legacies of the Second World War; his international breakthrough, the landmark The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié, 1969), revealed the extent to which his adopted France had collaborated with the Nazis. The son of the German-Jewish director Max Ophuls – known for such elaborate melodramas as La Ronde (1950) – Marcel began his career in film drama but achieved greater traction with complex, rigorous, meticulously edited non-fiction work. In documentaries such as The Memory of Justice (1976) and Hôtel Terminus (1988), the filmmaker set multiple testimonies side by side, sometimes corroborating, often contradicting, always inviting the spectator to shake any passivity and judge for themselves. In The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls spent four and a half hours of screen time – and many more hours of shooting – staking out the city of Clermont-Ferrand 'to analyse four years of collective destiny'. Patiently hearing from residents of all walks of life, the film picked insistently away at the Gaullist myth of a country united against an occupier, instead revealing two Frances at odds with one another – one resisting, the other collaborating. In France, Sorrow was denounced by conservative politicians as 'a prosecutorial film' and initially rejected for both theatrical and television distribution. After much legal wrangling, it finally opened in 1971, earning an Oscar nomination the following year, but it did not air on French television until 1981; a station director said the film had 'destroyed myths the French people still needed'. Ophuls subsequently made films on Vietnam (The Harvest of My Lai, 1970) and the Irish Troubles (A Sense of Loss, 1972), though the latter was rejected by the BBC. His personal favourite, The Memory of Justice, revisited the Nuremberg trials in the context of more recent conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam, though the project was again beset by lengthy and expensive legal challenges; Ophuls filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter and spent a decade on the lecture circuit. He made a triumphant return, however, with the Oscar-winning Hôtel Terminus, on the life of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. As free-roaming as its subject, unearthing material both disturbing and absurd, the film ends in one of documentary cinema's most extraordinary sequences, as Ophuls witnesses a chance encounter between a woman who as a child had seen her father carted away by the Gestapo and an elderly neighbour who had turned a blind eye to the same events. Though Hôtel Terminus sparked violent arguments at Cannes, the critic Roger Ebert admired its tenacity, calling it 'the film of a man who continues the conversation after others would like to move on to more polite subjects'. Yet as a characteristically combative Ophuls countered in 2004: 'I'm not obsessed. I just happen to think that the Holocaust was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. Think I'm wrong?' He was born Hans Marcel Oppenheimer in Frankfurt on November 1 1927, the son of Max Oppenheimer and his actress wife Hildegard Wall. The family fled Germany for France in 1933, taking French citizenship in 1938, whereupon Max dropped the umlaut from his stage name, Ophüls; after the occupation they fled anew to Los Angeles, where Max began an unhappy spell as a studio filmmaker and Marcel attended Hollywood High and Occidental College. Marcel Ophuls completed military service in Japan before studying at UC Berkeley, taking US citizenship in 1950. Upon graduation he moved to Paris, briefly studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, before dropping out and working as an assistant director (initially under the pseudonym Marcel Wall, to dodge nepotism accusations) on John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) and his father's sweeping Lola Montès (1955). He made his directorial debut with a German television adaptation of John Mortimer's The Dock Brief (Das Pflichtmandat, 1958), before being tapped by François Truffaut to contribute to the portmanteau film Love at Twenty (L'amour à vingt ans, 1962). By now he was part of the New Wave set: Jeanne Moreau funded his detective comedy Banana Skin (Peau de Banane, 1963), but his fiction career came to a halt after the flop thriller Place Your Bets, Ladies (Faites vos jeux, mesdames, 1965). Ophuls moved into documentary, taking a job with the French broadcaster ORTF, where he railed against the prevailing state censorship; he was eventually fired in May 1968 after making a film deemed sympathetic to the student rioters, though by then he was well into post-production on The Sorrow and the Pity. After Hôtel Terminus, Ophuls suffered mixed fortunes. November Days (1990), on the subject of German reunification, played as part of the BBC's Inside Story strand, but The Troubles We've Seen (Veillées d'armes, 1994), on wartime journalism and the Bosnian conflict, failed to reach an audience, despite a César nomination in France. He worked more sparingly in the new millennium, completing Max par Marcel (2009), on his father's legacy, and the career overview Ain't Misbehavin' (Un voyageur, 2013), his final completed film; a later project on anti-Semitism and the Middle East, Des vérités désagréables (Unpleasant Truths), ran into financial and legal troubles and remained unfinished at the time of his death. During a visit to Israel in 2007, Ophuls attempted to define his life's work: 'I'm not a preacher, a judge or an adviser. I'm just a filmmaker trying now and then to make sense of crises... Life made me, unwillingly, an expert on 20th-century crises. I would've preferred to direct musicals.' He is survived by his wife Regine, née Ackermann, and three daughters. Marcel Ophuls, born November 1 1927, died May 24 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Sam Gardiner's family 'overwhelmed' by support
The family of Race Across The World contestant Sam Gardiner have said they are "overwhelmed" by the love and support they have received following his death. Mr Gardiner, 24, who took part in the BBC show alongside his mother Jo, died in hospital following a crash on the A34 near Manchester on 26 May. His family set up a fundraiser in his memory for the National Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) charity which has raised more than £10,000. Ms Gardiner said her son had been diagnosed with the condition, which can develop when someone has been exposed to alcohol in the womb, and added: "If some good comes of this tragedy, it will be that FASD is better understood". "We have been overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of messages of love and support on social media and in comments to press reporting," she said. "We would like to thank the BBC, Studio Lambert and everyone at Race Across The World production, fellow contestants and fans of the show for all their support at this terrible time. "It has been very comforting to know that Sam touched so many people." Ms Gardiner said she had been "particularly moved by all the messages that Sam was an inspiration to many who have been impacted by FASD". "We adopted Sam and he was diagnosed with FASD. As viewers of season two will recall, this was a big challenge both for Sam and for us as his parents," she said. But she added that the National FASD charity "helped us on that journey". The landscape gardener died when his car left the road and rolled before landing on its side on the A34 in Gatley, Cheadle, Greater Manchester Police said. He was the only person in the white Volkswagen Golf R estate and was taken to hospital, where he died from his injuries on 29 May. Mr Gardiner and his mother travelled across Mexico and Argentina in the BBC show, broadcast in March 2020. His father Andrew said: "When the news broke last week, friends asked how they could help. "After some thought, I decided to set up a JustGiving page to raise money for National FASD in memory of Sam. "The page is called Sam Gardiner; Super Human." He said it was "very humbling to see the Race Around The World family rally to this worthy cause". A message on its official Instagram account said: "Sam lived his life full of love, exuberance and adventure as seen on BBC's Race Across the World. "National FASD is both humbled and honoured to help carry on his legacy via donations coming from hundreds." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230. Former Race Across the World contestant dies in crash National FASD
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
How ‘Hacks' Found Comedy in Every Prop, Light, and Gesture
'I never actually made tooth-to-Emmy-winner contact. I did not bite.' That's co-creator and actor Paul W. Downs denying — to the best of his recollection — ever clamping down on Emmy-winner Julianne Nicholson's hand while lunging to bite her during their 'frantic' scene in 'Hacks' Season 4. More from IndieWire The Creators of 'Hacks' Want To Know Which TV You Own The Cinematography of 'Hacks' Outdoes Itself in Season 4 Finale and Makes Deborah Vance the Queen of the World 'I think that's the only take where you pretended to [bite her], actually,' co-creator Lucia Aniello said. 'She would've been fine with it. She's so game, if Paul bit her hand, she would've gone with it. She would not have stopped the scene.' 'She was really holding onto that bag,' Downs said. 'She was very committed.' The scene in question, which you can see in the full video interview above, is from Episode 9, 'A Slippery Slope,' which was written by Downs, Aniello, and co-creator Jen Statsky. They were joined by cinematographer Adam Bricker and production designer Rob Tokarz, for a virtual panel discussion as part of Universal Studio Group's USG University. Let's break it down: Jimmy (Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) are helping a sleepy, hungover Dance Mom (Nicholson) into her dressing room, where they have to revitalize the TikTok star so she can perform on Deborah's (Jean Smart) late-night show. The premise is simple enough. But it's the details — the performances and props, the lighting and the wallpaper, the cinematography and the blocking — that elevate a funny scene to hysterical heights. 'There were some nicks and cuts. There were some injuries,' Downs said. 'That was a very physical scene. She threw herself into a bar cart. There was blood.' That being said, production designer Rob Tokarz and his team helped to protect the actors as best they could. When Dance Mom first enters the room, yes, she stumbles into a bar cart, which looks and sounds dangerous enough to get a laugh — even though it was perfectly safe. 'We had to make sure the bar cart is something safe for her to bump into multiple times, so we had to replace all the glassware with something that was not going to break apart,' Tokarz said. 'I think we replaced the glass on the bar cart itself with tempered glass so if it were to crack it would be safe.' Another astute touch by Tokarz was making sure any prop used in the scene for comic effect would also be something that would logically be found in a late-night dressing room — like the big metal bucket first glimpsed when the characters enter, when it's filled with bottles of water, and later seen in close-up as Dance Mom's getting dunked. 'We had options on what the ice bucket would actually be and what would look best cinematically,' Tokarz said. 'Then we kind of back it up and have it make sense to the room. It all has to tie together to be realistic, so it's not like something that suddenly appeared on the coffee table. It was holding the water bottles at one point, and then they used it for something else.' 'So we take all these elements and just make sure nobody's going to get hurt, [while giving the actors] the flexibility to do what they did.' 'We definitely scripted a lot of the physical comedy because it was such a frantic scene,' Downs said. 'They were essentially going to be dragging an unconscious woman into her dressing room and trying to revive her. There was a lot of opportunity for us to mine moments for physical comedy. […] Megan Stalter, Julianne Nicholson, and myself all had a lot of fun doing it, and I think we're all people who are open to improvisation and ad-libbing, but that was one that we kind of had to choreograph pretty specifically. There's so many props, and there's so much matching, continuity-wise. […] There was the clearing of the cocaine, which is a very common phrase in film and theater.' Aniello, who also directed the episode, said they don't often get to 'do a lot of rehearsal — some might say none' — but they make the time for more physical scenes like this one. It helps maximize the humor already written into the scripts while identifying unforeseen avenues for additional wit. 'When we reveal she's on all fours, that's written into the script,' Aniello said. 'They wrestle over the bag, she runs into the bar cart, all those beats are definitely there. In terms of 'they're sitting down and this is where they stand up,' that's the kind of thing that we work out.' 'It's a delicate dance of being very direct in the script and then also when we rehearse so we can match continuity and stuff,' Statsky said. 'But also, like Paul's saying — and credit to him — he and Meg and Julianne are so present and such incredible comedians that, in the moment, you also want to give space for them to make choices. One of the funniest moments in the scene to me is when Paul goes over to the door and throws the purse over his shoulder. That was not in the script. That was just something Paul found in the moment — or maybe Lucia, you told him — but it was found on the day, in the moment.' Then, of course, there's the act of actually capturing everything written down, designed, and performed. 'What I love about this scene from a camera perspective is just how reactive the camera is,' Adam Bricker, the cinematographer, said. 'We have incredible camera operators who are really in the scene, living in the moment. There's a great energy to the scene, and I think they strike the right tonal balance of not trying to introduce that energy with the camera, but sort of reacting to the performances in a way that keeps it really grounded and real.' 'Then from a lighting perspective, we wanted to keep it naturalistic but also make it feel a little scary, like something bad might happen in here.' Something bad did happen in that dressing room, but at least no one left with teeth marks — or so they say. 'Hacks' is available on Max. IndieWire partnered with Universal Studio Group for USG University, a series of virtual panels celebrating the best in television art from the 2024-2025 TV season across NBC Universal's portfolio of shows. USG University (a Universal Studio Group program) is presented in partnership with Roybal Film & TV Magnet and IndieWire's Future of Filmmaking. Catch up on the latest USG University videos here or directly at the USG University site. Best of IndieWire 2023 Emmy Predictions: Who Will Win at the Primetime Emmy Awards? 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series
