It may feel like a far cry from the Instagram-worthy cocktail bars and eateries that define Soho now, but London ’s gay village and entertainment district has a colourful history beyond the few sex shops and landmark queer venues that still stand today. It's this history which sets the scene for the BBC ’s latest crime drama, Dope Girls: a world where police raids, illicit nightclubs and budding female criminal enterprises was the order of the day. Based on the book, Dope Girls: The Birth of The British Drug Underground by Marek Kohn, the name alone suggests that the series will be a thrilling watch – which is bolstered by the fact that Shannon Murphy (Babyteeth, Killing Eve) and Polly Stenham (That Face) are behind the show.
And the real life story is appropriately sensational: here’s what to know. According to the BBC, the series is inspired by “a forgotten time in history” – a period directly after the end of World War One, when men returned to Britain from the battlefields to find that the women they left behind had found a new sense of empowerment and power. Suddenly, women wanted the vote (shocking), and they wanted to work in institutions like the police rather than the kitchen.
Faced with a sudden loss of manpower after the horrendous losses of the First World War, the men started, reluctantly, to cede ground. This applied to nightlife, too. From 1914 to 1918, around 150 illegal nightclubs opened in Soho, and for the women at the time, London was their p.
