Loosely based on a real-life illicit underworld which gripped post-First World War Britain, Dope Girls was always going to draw comparisons with a certain flat-capped period drama. Even its original BBC home appeared to proudly bill it as a “spiritual successor to Peaky Blinders.”

But punkier, dreamier, and queerer than the show which got every middle-aged hipster partying like it’s 1919, the six-parter has more to offer than simply a feminist spin.

Co-written by Polly Stenham, the prodigious playwright whose first West End production premiered when she was just 20, the series—now available on Hulu in the U.S.—sets its subversive tone from the opening flash-forward.

Against the backdrop of a riotous Trafalgar Square and an abrasive, willfully anachronistic electronic score, angel-w

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