Dancing on the Edge

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
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Dancing on the Edge

#1 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jan 26, 2013 10:58 am

I'm not sure when it will be airing but the BBC is currently trailing the new five part Stephen Poliakoff series about a black jazz band in 1930s London, Dancing On The Edge, featuring John Goodman, Jacqueline Bisset, Jane Asher, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Allan Corduner and Anthony Head amongst the cast.

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GaryC
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Re: TV of 2013

#2 Post by GaryC » Sat Jan 26, 2013 3:48 pm

colinr0380 wrote:I'm not sure when it will be airing but the BBC is currently trailing the new five part Stephen Poliakoff series about a black jazz band in 1930s London, Dancing On The Edge, featuring John Goodman, Jacqueline Bisset, Jane Asher, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Allan Corduner and Anthony Head amongst the cast.
I've just seen a trailer for this - it starts on 4 February.

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Re: TV of 2013

#3 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Jan 26, 2013 5:05 pm

Wonder if BBC America will pick it up.

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domino harvey
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Re: TV of 2013

#4 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jan 27, 2013 1:43 pm

Amazon.co.uk's got a March DVD release up for pre-order for only ten pounds

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colinr0380
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Re: Dancing on the Edge

#5 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jan 28, 2013 8:26 am

A Guardian interview with Poliakoff. I'm particularly interested in the section relating to the challenges of doing a five part series:
This time round, though, faced with making his first ever five-part drama, "the most punishing, demanding" project of his entire career, he did consider sharing directorial duties with someone else. For practical reasons, the idea was abandoned, but I can't imagine he was disappointed
I'm assuming that each episode will be 60 minutes, making it in terms of length around the same as Poliakoff's biggest series, Perfect Strangers, at around five hours, but that project was in fewer chunks (I think three) between 90 to 110 minutes. The nearest he has come previously to directing a mini-series is Shooting The Past, which also took place over three episodes (along with a couple of interstitial programmes of interview-style side material detailing some stories behind the photos. It sounds as if the "Seventh Hour" episode of this series could be in the same style as that).

It will be interesting to see whether making an extended episodic piece, presumably with cliffhangers and recaps and so on, will have any effect on his style. I also wonder if this was a specific choice based on the material or could be more of a BBC demand (to fit into the period drama evening slot)? Who knows!

EDIT: The first episode, at least, is going to be 90 minutes. The second is 60 minutes.

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colinr0380
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Re: Dancing on the Edge

#6 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Mar 01, 2013 4:35 pm

It is going to take me a while to digest the series fully but it was yet another piece by Poliakoff that uses its long running time to intially create an atmosphere to get lost and luxuriate in and then during the final few episodes a kind of bittersweet nostalgia for a time and place (a moment even - one that perhaps never existed perfectly except in memory. Something which the drama allows the audience to participate in as much as the characters. Of course the implicit theorem of an older series like Shooting The Past or Hidden City was the way that having access to images is only half the story - you need someone with the knowledge (or the blarney) to be able to interpret them in a captivating way in order to bring them fully to life again for new purposes, something with gets dealt with in Dancing on the Edge in the journalism scenes, as well as the bluffing on the train during the final episode) that has been lost as various characters get disabused of romantic notions and forced into pragmatic, binary decisions. Or to accept that there are some things they don't have the power to change, such as other people's minds.

I rewatched Shooting the Past recently again to kind of get me into the Poliakoff mindset and, as well as not having remembered that the final 'story through photographs' that gets told there involves a jazz troupe and murder, I kept feeling parallels in atmosphere with the two series - the attempts to delay the inevitable and characters driven to drastic measures in the face of multiple snowballing situations.

The last episode in particular is wonderfully done - I'd particularly be interested to learn whether there was an intentional, conscious homage going on to The Godfather in the restaurant scene.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Mar 15, 2013 3:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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AidanKing
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Re: Dancing on the Edge

#7 Post by AidanKing » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:05 pm

There was an additional episode titled Interviewing Louis broadcast last week which was billed as an interview of Louis by Stanley looking at the characters' recollections of the events of the series but which actually included an additional plot strand that took the plot even further into Eyes Wide Shut territory with its dodgy cabal of evil old men.

I thought the series was the best Poliakoff I've seen to be honest. My only real criticism was the incidental music (not the band music): I thought there was too much of it and it occasionally seemed to contradict what was happening on screen. For example, some of the parties had as background soaring strings which seemed to indicate admiration of the events on screen, which I don't think was Poliakoff's intention, and Pamela's scathing toast to the assembled party after Louis was wrongly accused and had gone into hiding was backed by music that undercut quite how subtly and effectively critical she was being.

I also thought of The Godfather in the restaurant scene.

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Re: Dancing on the Edge

#8 Post by domino harvey » Sun Oct 20, 2013 12:23 pm

If you subscribe to Starz the entire miniseries is up for free On Demand

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domino harvey
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Re: Dancing on the Edge

#9 Post by domino harvey » Wed Apr 08, 2015 6:55 pm


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