Dancing on the Edge (Television Series) (2013)

February 4, 2013, to March 10, 2013, broadcast dates (Five or six episodes? See discussion below.)

Directed by Stephen Poliakoff

Written by Stephen Poliakoff

Music supervision by Hothouse Music Ltd.

Jazz arrangements by Paul Englishby

Edited by Chris Wyatt (Episodes 1–6), Matthew Gray (Episode 6)

Cinematography by Ashley Rowe

Chiwetel Ejiofor as Louis Lester

Angel Coulby as Jessie Taylor

Wunmi Mosaku as Carla

Ariyon Bakare as Wesley Holt

Chris Storr as Joe, trumpet player

Jay Phelps, second trumpet

Charles Angiama, clarinet

Oroh Angiama, bass

Miles Brett, tenor saxophone

Trevor Edwards, trombone

Cosimo Keita, drums

Steve Williamson, alto saxophone

Matthew Goode as Stanley Mitchell

Jenna Coleman as Rosie Williams

Sam Hoare as Eric Stillman

Allan Corduner as Mr. Wax

Jacqueline Bisset as Lavinia, Lady Cremone

John Goodman as Walter Masterson

Tom Hughes as Julian Luscombe

Joanne Vanderham as Pamela Luscombe

Janet Montgomery as Sarah Peters

Rob Edwards as Sarah’s father

Anthony Head as Arthur Donaldson

John Hopkins as Prince George, Duke of Kent

Sam Troughton as the Prince of Wales

Mel Smith as Nathan Schlesinger

Miles Richardson as Harry Thornton

Maggie McCarthy as Mrs. Mitchell

Caroline Quentin as Deirdre

David Dawson as Detective Inspector Horton

Gerard Horan as Detective Inspector Gunson

Katherine Press as Hannah

Produced by Endgame Entertainment/Playground, Creative England, LipSync Productions, Ruby Film and Television

Broadcast by BBC

I watched Dancing on the Edge on DVD. Everything I have read online indicates that the series originally aired only five episodes. The DVD version that I watched included a sixth episode, and the version shown on PBS in the United States broke down these six episodes into eight episodes shown on eight different nights. The sixth episode on the DVD (the eighth episode on PBS) could be interpreted as introducing a new story line, one that is connected to Louis Lester and the Freemasons but could have continued without Louis. (The Freemasons play a pivotal role in the plot of the first five episodes.)

I think Dancing on the Edge would have been better as a series without the sixth episode, and I don’t know why it’s included on the DVD if a second season was never produced. Compared to the first five episodes, the sixth episode is also a bit of a clunker: Viewers watch Stanley’s interviews with Louis, Carla, Jessie, and then Louis again, and then they watch Louis and mostly a woman who calls herself Josephine talk on the telephone. The series, on the DVD, ends with a dull episode, with dull visuals; the first five episodes, however, make up for the sixth.

Dancing on the Edge is a story about a jazz band—the Louis Lester Band—trying to make its fortune in 1930s London. The soundtrack is original work for the show, and it is wonderful. The band members, all black musicians, meet all sorts of people during their stay in London. Some want to help the band; others are dead set against the band and individual members. Some of this conflict adds to the noir mood.

But what, exactly, makes Dancing on the Edge noir at all?

(This blog post about the television series Dancing on the Edge contains spoilers.)

Episode 1 starts with an unidentified man, in a top hat and cape, walking the late-night streets of London in 1933. The camera follows him as he tries to avoid detection on the street. When he enters a rundown office building, he avoids people there, too, until he meets a young man working on the second floor. He (viewers don’t know yet that it’s Louis Lester) says, “I need you to get me out of the country, Stanley.” Stanley and Louis need a plan, so Stanley puts on one of Louis’s records, a jazz record, which then prompts the fade-out/fade-in transition to eighteen months earlier. The flashback takes viewers to daylight, to brighter and happier times (in either 1931 or 1932).

Flashbacks, one of the hallmarks of noir, are used very effectively in Dancing on the Edge. Episodes 2 to 5 use flashbacks to previous episodes as a way to remind viewers about important plot developments. I found these to be very smooth transitions: The reminders orient viewers without an intrusive voice-over announcing something like, “From the previous episode.” The reminders are most often Louis Lester’s memories of recent events, and seeing them from his perspective makes the story much more seamless.

Even more important is that most of the events leading up to Louis’s reasons for needing to leave the country are told in flashback. Viewers have no idea in Episode 1 why he is so desperate to leave, and they have to watch subsequent episodes to find out. Flashbacks reveal Louis’s story and the mystery behind his series-opening statement to Stanley Mitchell. Episode 5 is the first one in which most of the story is told in the present, when viewers see how Louis and those still loyal to him send him on his way.

In the meantime, Louis and his band members face betrayal, angst, loneliness, bureaucratic red tape: in other words, more hallmarks of noir. In the context of Dancing on the Edge, however, these noir plot developments occur in an atmosphere of racial prejudice. As long as the band and its members are famous and well received by royalty and the upper class, they are welcome. The minute suspicions creep in, people turn against them. For example, Wesley Holt, the band’s manager, faces deportation because the hotel’s manager refuses to come to his defense and say that he is integral to the band’s performance. When Wesley Holt loses his battle with the Alien Registration Office, he feels betrayed by Louis Lester, too.

Louis himself comes under suspicion of murder, and some of his friends and acquaintances turn on him quickly after the police focus their investigation on him. Some of them are especially eager to see him arrested simply because he is a black musician. Some of them are trying to protect their own, and they don’t care at all about justice, guilt, or innocence. Louis has to figure out who can be trusted and how to navigate an increasingly hostile situation.

If I had a scale, with 0 being “not neo-noir” and 10 being “definitely neo-noir,” I might put Dancing on the Edge at a 7 or an 8. And if deciding if the series were noir wasn’t a factor at all, and I was allowed to lop off Episode 6 completely, I would give the television series an 8 or a 9. It’s so much fun to watch, and I think it is a neo-noir, with betrayal, anxiety, murder, and flashbacks. The jazz music, another hallmark of later film noir, makes for some fantastic listening, and it’s integral to the plot, too. The list of characters at the beginning of this post is unusually long because the Louis Lester Band members have to be included, of course. But I would still take out Episode 6!