Hulu's 'Dope Girls' Trailer Is Gritty and Full of Atmosphere

Gritty six-part period drama Dope Girls is finally set to premiere in America this month, and if the new Hulu trailer is anything to go by, it's going to arrive with a bang. The story, which feels like nothing so much as a more feminist take on gangland favorite Peaky Blinders, is set to explore the birth of the modern nightlife industry, which many will likely be surprised to learn was guided and shaped by female endeavour. During the First World War, a generation of women found themselves newly empowered in an economy when most men were being sent off to fight. Unwilling to relinquish the modicum of self-sufficiency they'd gained during the war years, many of them turned to more illicit and often dangerous activities.

Inspired by Marek Kohn’s nonfiction book Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground, the drama is set in London in 1918, when women were running the clubs in London's SoHo neighborhood on their own terms, often dealing drugs and other illicit substances in the process.

The series stars Julianne Nicholson (Mare of Easttown) as Kate Galloway, a single mother who opens a nightclub in post-World War I London, embracing a criminal lifestyle to provide for her daughter Evie. Eliza Scanlen (Little Women) plays Violet Davies, a member of the first wave of female officers to join the Metropolitan Police, who is assigned to go undercover to investigate Soho's illicit underground scene. These two women are clearly on a collision course with each other, and the only question will be how they manage to cross into each other's lives.