Dancing On The Edge
There are some weeks when, frankly, it’s a bit of a struggle to find something new in the television schedule that I can recommend to your attention. And then there’s this week.
Dancing On The Edge (scheduled for 4 February on BBC Two) is a big, shiny, expensive-looking drama from the Beeb about an all-black jazz band trying to make a living in London between the wars. Big and shiny don’t automatically mean good. A cast of well-known names doesn’t always get you an instant hit. The fact that it’s written by proper theatre chap Stephen Poliakoff isn’t an absolute guarantee of entertainment, either.
But let me assure you from the outset, Dancing On The Edge is top notch. We start, as all the smart books seem to nowadays, in media res. Something terrible is happening, or has just happened, and charismatic jazz band leader Louis Lester (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is in trouble. To find out what the trouble is, we need to go back to the beginning of the Louis Lester Orchestra’s rise to fame.
Most of this first, feature length episode is about Louis meeting Stanley Mitchell: writer, editor and apparently sole staff member of The Music Express. Stanley (played by Watchmen star Matthew Goode) seems to have another job besides singlehandedly being Melody Maker’s chief rival. He has been engaged by the manager of a somewhat moribund hotel dance hall to fill its tables with the Smart Set.
Stanley’s plan is to install Louis and his band mates as the resident entertainers and see to it that they acquire a Royal admirer. To enhance the band’s appeal he encourages them to hire a singer. There follows one of those standard ‘audition’ montages we know of old, but it’s capped off with one of the most delicious bits of video editing you’re liable to see in 2013.
Of course the band get their singer. Two in fact. And they gain a substantial following among the bright young things of 1930s London. But it’s not all plain sailing. Another one of the band’s admirers is the fabulously wealthy, distinctly sinister Masterson (John Goodman). He’s the source of much joy for the band, but I don’t think it’s spoiling the plot too much to suggest that he looks like trouble in the long run.
The show looks lovely. It evokes – beautifully, and I imagine accurately, I’m not quite old enough to be sure – a prewar demi-monde of jazz clubs and Gatsbyesque millionaires.
The cast is superb. It features (as well as Goode, Ejiofor and Goodman) Mel Smith with a wonderful turn as the hotel owner and Janet Montgomery (last seen in Spies Of Warsaw) as the luminously lovely Sarah – one of those bright young things I was talking about.
If you like a bit of Jazz Age Evelyn Waugh, or miss the short-lived revival of Upstairs Downstairs, make a date with Dancing On The Edge. I can’t promise next week’s TV options will be as unmissable as this.
Dancing On The Edge (scheduled for 4 February on BBC Two) is a big, shiny, expensive-looking drama from the Beeb about an all-black jazz band trying to make a living in London between the wars. Big and shiny don’t automatically mean good. A cast of well-known names doesn’t always get you an instant hit. The fact that it’s written by proper theatre chap Stephen Poliakoff isn’t an absolute guarantee of entertainment, either.
But let me assure you from the outset, Dancing On The Edge is top notch. We start, as all the smart books seem to nowadays, in media res. Something terrible is happening, or has just happened, and charismatic jazz band leader Louis Lester (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is in trouble. To find out what the trouble is, we need to go back to the beginning of the Louis Lester Orchestra’s rise to fame.
Most of this first, feature length episode is about Louis meeting Stanley Mitchell: writer, editor and apparently sole staff member of The Music Express. Stanley (played by Watchmen star Matthew Goode) seems to have another job besides singlehandedly being Melody Maker’s chief rival. He has been engaged by the manager of a somewhat moribund hotel dance hall to fill its tables with the Smart Set.
Stanley’s plan is to install Louis and his band mates as the resident entertainers and see to it that they acquire a Royal admirer. To enhance the band’s appeal he encourages them to hire a singer. There follows one of those standard ‘audition’ montages we know of old, but it’s capped off with one of the most delicious bits of video editing you’re liable to see in 2013.
Of course the band get their singer. Two in fact. And they gain a substantial following among the bright young things of 1930s London. But it’s not all plain sailing. Another one of the band’s admirers is the fabulously wealthy, distinctly sinister Masterson (John Goodman). He’s the source of much joy for the band, but I don’t think it’s spoiling the plot too much to suggest that he looks like trouble in the long run.
The show looks lovely. It evokes – beautifully, and I imagine accurately, I’m not quite old enough to be sure – a prewar demi-monde of jazz clubs and Gatsbyesque millionaires.
The cast is superb. It features (as well as Goode, Ejiofor and Goodman) Mel Smith with a wonderful turn as the hotel owner and Janet Montgomery (last seen in Spies Of Warsaw) as the luminously lovely Sarah – one of those bright young things I was talking about.
If you like a bit of Jazz Age Evelyn Waugh, or miss the short-lived revival of Upstairs Downstairs, make a date with Dancing On The Edge. I can’t promise next week’s TV options will be as unmissable as this.