Thoughts on Dancing on the Edge (II) ...
Right, I’d better get the rest of this done before my memories of it start to fade. I’ve commented on the first three episodes of Dancing on the Edge in this post, which (if you’re not in the mood to read) can be broken down into seven main points:
1. Angel is amazing
2. As suspected, it’s more about white aristocrats than black musicians
3. Pacing is achingly slow and dialogue quite stilted
4. Angel looks and sounds glorious
5. Pamela and Julian are probably the most interesting characters
6. It’s a beautiful rendering of 1930s culture, clothing, architecture, music, cars, and current events
7.Did I mention Angel?
There Will Be Spoilers
The first three episodes deal with the rise of the Louie Lester band, which manages to land itself an extended gig to play at the Imperial Hotel in London. Their band leader Louie is helped out by a range of upper-class white folks, including music journalist Stanley Mitchell, aristocratic siblings Pamela and Julian Lascombe, photographer Sarah Peters, American millionaire Walter Masterson, enigmatic “collector” Arthur Donaldson, and eventually the widowed and reclusive Lavinia Cremone.
Despite a few odd occurrences (mostly to do with the strange dynamic that exists between Masterson and Julian, the latter employed by the former in a rather ambiguous capacity) and the ever-tenuous position of a black jazz band in white society, things are looking good for Louie, particularly when he begins a relationship with Sarah.
But naturally, disaster strikes. After playing for the Prince of Wales, Louie returns to the hotel with the rest of the band to find Jessie bleeding heavily from a stab wound. Mysterious circumstances surround the attack - though it seems clear that Jessie feigned an illness to get out of singing for the Prince in order to meet with Julian instead, neither the audience nor any of the other characters are privy to what exactly happened between the two of them that led to her eventual death. Louie only knows that he saw Julian leaving the hotel a few minutes before he found Jessie, though witnesses and travelling documents state that he was most definitely on a train to Paris at the time.
By the time Jessie succumbs to her injuries, Julian seems well and truly in the clear, despite Louie’s suspicions that he’s the killer. But naturally, his watertight alibi (that could have easily been constructed by his doting employer) puts him in the clear, and without any other leads, the police are all-too-ready to place the blame on Louie.
The final two episodes deal with the fallout of Jessie’s death, and the last one in particular is the only one that is not framed as a flashback kick-started from Louie’s point-of-view. Previous episodes all began with a short prologue in which Louie is hiding out at the offices of the Music Express magazine, but now that the memories have caught up with reality, you get the sense that there’s a more objective look at all the characters and their actions in the final ninety minutes.
From this set-up, two distinctive storylines and themes emerge - for Louie it’s a question of who he can trust. Paranoia threatens to overcome his common sense, and since the narrative gives him very little agency in his escape from the law, he’s forced to rely on people that are grappling against the immense temptation of turning him in, whether it be for monetary gain or to protect themselves.
And for Louie’s self-proclaimed open-minded “white allies” (i.e. the rest of the cast), it involves being confronted by the reality of how forward-thinking they truly are when the going gets tough, and how much they’re willing to compromise their principles under the influence of material reward or threat of personal harm. To Poliakoff’s credit, he doesn’t go as easy on them as I initially assumed he would, as most of them are all too eager to wash their hands of Louie and/or deliberately try to turn him in at the first sign of trouble.
Ultimately, who Louie can trust among his white allies is a short list of three: Stanley (obviously), Pamela (surprisingly) and Eric (somewhat irrelevantly; he’s really just there for plot purposes).
(Though it’s worth saying that whilst Carla eventually gets to play an important role in smuggling Louie to safety, the band itself is once more shunted to the side).
***
So my feelings about Dancing on the Edge went roughly as follows: excited --> disappointed --> intrigued --> reasonably satisfied. Having seen it in its entirety, the power of hindsight allows me to make some amendments on my initial reactions as stated in my first review.
First of all, I actually think that the extremely slow pacing pays off. After Jessie’s death, a growing sense of unease begins to emerge, and Poliakoff is exceptionally good at creating moments of what I’ve decided to call “sudden disconcertment.” These moments occasionally popped up in the first three episodes, as when Louie is called to a hotel room at Julian’s behest to find the suite trashed and a drunk, bruised girl on the bed. It’s an alarming situation, all the more so because we arrive after the tumult, and are given no indication then or later as to what actually happened. There are other such moments: the secretive presence of the freemasons in the basement, half-glimpsed arguments between Julian and Masterson, the future king dancing intimately with a woman while her husband watches uncomfortably, a performance being interrupted because of the assassination attempt on the American President. They generate a distinct feeling of discomfort and the sense that the rug could be pulled out from under one’s feet at any time.
This type of thing happens more frequently in the last two episodes, some of which had me biting my fingernails. The first is when the net starts to close around Louie, though only he is aware of it. The police are beginning to question his claim that he saw Julian at the hotel before Jessie’s death, and restage the event for Louie with an unidentified man at the end of the hall that he can’t properly distinguish. It's hard to describe until you see it for yourself, but there's something eerie about the whole scenario. Furthermore, journalists are pooling about everywhere, particularly one who has a genuinely creepy face (the camera lingers on her long and often enough to make you think she’s important, but apparently she was just singled out for her immensely disturbing features). From Louie’s perspective, smiles are starting to look fake; people are caught staring.
It accumulates in the new offices of Music Express, Masterson having announced his decision to buy the magazine and re-establish it in a swanky new building. His business partner in this endeavour is Lady Lavinia Cremone, and the likes of Stanley, Rosie and Eric have been hired with significant increases in their pay checks. Julian is already in Masterson’s employ, and Sarah is suddenly offered a job as a photographer. From the outskirts of the group, Louie witnesses all this happening and begins to wander through the building, seeing people at the end of corridors and through doorways in the otherwise empty rooms, hearing excitement and joy in their voices, knowing that he isn’t a part of it.
By this point, the paranoia has well and truly seeped in; both for Louie and the audience. It’s a nightmarish sequence that’s achieved through the combination of camera techniques, slow motion, and the appalled look on Chiwetel Ejiofor’s face as Louie realizes that all his white chums are being scooped up by an American millionaire with close ties to the youth Louie suspects of murdering Jessie. At this stage you really get the sense that he’s trapped in some bizarre fantasy world where he’s the only one who can see the conspiracy taking shape around him; in which Masterson is deliberately taking control of his allies, setting them up to turn against Louie without them even realizing it. You can feel what little control he has slipping away.
From here Louie realizes that he has to go fetch a lawyer, and he and Sarah go to Donaldson for help. By now you’re well and truly on edge (no pun intended) and there’s another disconcerting moment when two little girls answer the door. They’re introduced as Donaldson’s niece and her friend, but by this point, Poliakoff has cultivated such an atmosphere that it’s impossible not to think that there’s something innately off-putting about their presence, even though there’s absolutely nothing to suggest that anything untoward is going on between them and Donaldson. It’s simply that by now you’re been conditioned to think the absolute worst of any given situation.
So Donaldson calls for a lawyer, assuring Louie that he’s on his way, and once Sarah has left, he begins to babble amiably about his travels and the antics of the children whilst Louie sits there, knowing that his arrest is imminent. Donaldson’s cheerfulness becomes both grating and false; he, the children and the bright sunny day all offset Louie’s jitteriness, but he’s so exhausted that he slips into sleep. He has a creepy dream of course, which includes Jessie’s dead body and a man placing a hood over his head, and when he awakes it’s to find that night has fallen, the door has been locked, and there’s no sign of anyone about. One of the little girls looks through the misty window in the door, refusing to unlock it or even say anything, and when Louie makes his escape through the kitchen window, he notes almost wonderingly that: “they took the knives...”
Louie’s calm demeanour has cracked, and like the scenario concerning the unconscious girl in Masterson’s hotel room, we’re given not definitive answer as to what exactly was going on, rendering it remarkably effective in how unnerving it all is. Did Sarah really go to meet her father? Did Donaldson really call the lawyer? Did Louie fall asleep or was he drugged somehow? What exactly happened when Donaldson realized Louie was unconscious?
As I said earlier, this is where I have to give Poliakoff some credit. In my first review I stated that would have preferred it if the story had been told strictly from the band’s point-of-view as they tried to negotiate this glitzy, dangerous world where half the population is affronted by their mere presence and the other half is treating them as “exotic pets” (so long as they remain well-behaved), which would have made Louie’s escape even more terrifying and nerve-wracking. But not getting that, I acknowledge that despite Poliakoff’s vested interest in the aristocrats rather than the band, he doesn’t let his white characters off the hook that easily.
Before ever watching a single minute of the show, I assumed that the storyline would inevitably depict white society turning on Louie. After watching the first three episodes I began to assume that Louie’s friends would all rally to his defence and take a stand against oppression in a celebration of how enlightened and wonderful they were. But as it turns out, the series takes the middle road by revealing that most of them do turn out to be either corrupt, hypocritical or simply weak.
Now, there’s no real mystery surrounding the fact that Julian killed Jessie - he may as well have “guilty” written on his forehead, and so despite his endless reiterations of “dear friend” it’s clear that he’s initially complicit in letting Louie go down for his crime. As well as this, Masterson (played incredibly well by John Goodman as both amicable and sinister) puts out a huge reward for Louie’s arrest and takes control of Music Express in a partial bid to gain leverage over Louie’s friends. Thus all the rest become tempted to one agree or another: Stanley is given the chance to expand the magazine under Masterson’s control (bringing in the themes of communication and the control of information; for as Rosie keeps telling him, he won’t have the same freedom working under Masterson), as well as a massive pay check. When Stanley goes to Lavinia for help in hiding Stanley, she makes it clear that she wishes to wash her hands of the whole situation, stating: “this was always the likely outcome, a negro band in a hotel” and scolding Stanley when he asks her to help, saying: “this is our first day [on the magazine] and I was really looking forward to it...now you bring me chaos.” Her life had been rejuvenated, and now she’s irritated that Louie exists as an impediment to that.
Sarah is also caught in Masterson’s net, being offered a job as head photographer on the magazine, and refusing to believe that those around her would be willing to betray Louie, going so far as to believe Donaldson’s smoothly concocted lies that justify exactly how and why Louie ended up locked in the kitchen (apparently the lawyer was delayed and they locked him in so that the children wouldn’t disturb his sleep).
Naturally, employees of the hotel are either helpless (Schlesinger) or malevolent (Harry) and though assistance is given by Eric and Deirdre, they’re minor characters anyway, and have little to either gain or lose by helping out. For the most part, they’re mainly just plot points.
Now, I’ll have more on Julian, Pamela and Donaldson in a bit, but for now, suffice to say that this condemnation of the characters in regards to their reactions to Louie's predicament surprised me. In particular, I had Sarah pegged as Poliakoff’s “special one”. Every writer seems to have one, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing: a character that more often than not embodies the writer’s viewpoint and acts as an audience stand-in; representing the ideal reaction of what most people would like to think of themselves in a similar situation. I had previously noted that Poliakoff seemed to be characterizing Sarah as the progressive and free-spirited heroine, a counterpoint to the vain and superfluous Pamela, the person most likely to single-handedly save Louie with her fire and passion. This was despite several scenes that demonstrated (perhaps accidentally) that she was rather clueless in several respects. I wasn’t sure whether or not these little hints were deliberate, as when dealing with writer’s favourites they’re usually somewhat blind to their flaws, but it turns out I was half right (and my theory that Sarah's photographs would yield an important clue was dead wrong).
Though Sarah remains largely sympathetic, there are signs that she’s of weaker character than we’d previously been led to believe. Despite Louie’s insistence that he saw Julian at the hotel, Sarah suggests that it was one of the journalists or a crazed fan that stabbed Jessie, refusing to believe that Julian was involved. Later, when Louie calls her after he’s escaped from Donaldson’s house, she’s insulted that Louie doesn’t trust her and insists that he return to the hotel. She believes that those gathered there will instantly rally to his side, and is affronted that Louie thinks they’d all turn on him so fast (even though most of them already have). Later her comments are more to do with her feelings than Louie’s predicament, stating: “I can’t bear the thought that you don’t trust me,” and “It hurts so much that you don’t trust me.”
At one point she almost gives the game away by crying in public, and it’s Pamela who must tell her: “you’ve got to hold your nerve,” (a far cry from their previous interactions, in which Sarah made a few jibes at Pamela’s expense) and who is then distracted by her need to be at the Musical Express offices for a meeting over the magazine’s future, where she is at once delighted and distracted by the camera that Masterson has bought for her.
I don’t want to be too hard on her, for though Louie is right not to trust Donaldson or to return to the hotel, his initial lack of faith in Sarah is misplaced in regards to her intentions, if not her actions. And yet Sarah does eventually succumb to the police investigation when her father’s safety (as a Russian immigrant) is threatened, and tips them off as to Louie’s location. So Louie’s mistrust is vindicated, being pre-emptively aware that she would fail him, even if it was in sympathetic circumstances.
It’s a sad scenario; in which the police essentially use each one’s vulnerability against the other, and though Sarah’s last scene involves her declaring that she’s going to reconcile with Louie, given his demeanour toward her in their last two telephone conversations it doesn’t seem likely that he’d reciprocate even if she did succeed in tracking him down.
***
And yet from Sarah’s failure emerges an entirely unexpected source of heroism: Pamela. Her role in Louie’s escape comes as a big surprise, and yet she ends up utterly critical to his freedom. It initially seems an odd storytelling choice to make, though on reflection it’s set-up quite well. Joanna Vanderham’s rather pallid appearance and emotionless delivery (both of which I think were entirely deliberate) lends her character a rather distant, lethargic air that makes her the last person you’d expect to come to Louie’s rescue. Throughout the series she’s had little interaction with Louie, and has been treated as little more than an afterthought by the other characters: ushered out of various rooms, excluded from plenty of conversations, and been the subject of many passive-aggressive comments, made by both by herself and others. And yet it through it all she’s depicted as quietly watchful; observing and listening and understanding what’s really going on around her, even when others don’t.
Her acquired upper-class listlessness is thus revealed as shrewdness and bravery, and at the dinner party that’s held in Mr Masterson’s honour (occurring concurrently with Louie going into hiding), she stands up and makes the following speech, which in hindsight seems defiant and even challenging:
I want to pay tribute to how everyone seems to be working for you now, Mr Masterson. Everybody except for me. And I’m sure that’s how it should be because I have no speciality of any kind and am quite unqualified for regular work. But I am sure it is a wonderful thing to be working for Mr Masterson. He will take care of my brother too in his career over the ocean. For my brother is a very sensitive person. So my toast, my toast is to you. I’m sure you will all prosper in the ways that you want - what you’ve set your hearts on by working for Mr Masterson.
It’s reads as totally scathing, even though you don’t hear a shred of it in her voice; but it’s clear at this stage that she knows full well that Julian killed Jessie, that Masterson is buying off all those who might speak up for Louie, and that they’re all damned if they go through with the deal he’s offering them. As she herself points out, only she is excluded from his designs, and so she alone manages to remain a “free agent” (so to speak). When Louie later asks her why she’s helping him, she rejects the implication that it’s out of guilt over what they both suspect Julian did to Jessie, and informs him that it’s because she truly believes he’s innocent. Between Louie vehemently voicing his distrust of Sarah and accusing Stanley of helping him only for the sake of a good story, he remains a little dumbfounded by Pamela’s presence, who goes on to disguise Louie in servant’s clothes, pay for the first class train tickets, and get rid of a porter on the train asking for passports.
A cynic might point out that she has the least to lose if she’s caught assisting in Louie’s escape (let’s face it, if the police were to discover she was involved, she probably wouldn’t face particularly dire consequences) and yet the narrative does set up a definitive choice for her in the final act: help Louie or protect Julian. For at the same time Louie’s escape to France via the train is going ahead, Julian is trying to finagle his own escape attempt, becoming something of a fugitive himself in his desperate bid to free himself from Masterson and the strange hold that the man has over him.
Julian is a tricky figure to pin down because Poliakoff gives us only a few clues about what exactly is going on in his head at any given time, rendering him the most enigmatic character of the ensemble. A part of me is frustrated at this, because I want to dismiss him as a spoiled little ass who kills an innocent girl, but I suppose I’d better try and be a bit more nuanced than that. So much of Julian’s story occurs off-screen (including the killing itself) that he remains a distant figure from start to finish, and I think people could walk away with drastically different takes on what who this character really was. Yet admittedly, the clues are there.
Personally, I saw Julian as a young man who was desperate to be loved by those he admired. He likes to think of himself as part of a progressive vanguard that stands for liberalism and forward-thinking, all whilst becoming painfully aware (especially after Jessie’s murder) that he’s part of the establishment that exploits and ultimately destroys people like Jessie and Louie.
There’s clearly a childhood trauma involved for he despises his mother, telling his sister at one point: “How on earth did we come out of that person? How are we a part of her?” and voicing a desire to “fill the house with Jews and negroes” which seems to be born just as much out of a rejection of his mother’s attitudes as it is self-reassurance of his own innate goodness and open-mindedness.
Tom Hughes put on a good show of jittery mannerisms and overly intense speech patterns, which don’t do much to hide the fact that there’s an intense psychotic charge lurking somewhere inside him. Throughout the entire series, everyone always seems a little off-put by this young man and the concentrated intensity he emanates, and so he’s unable to really connect with any of them on the level he wants. Jessie is the only one who really gives him any attention, and it’s clear that a part of that is because he’s filled her head with promises of stardom that he alone can acquire for her (perhaps seeing himself as her generous benefactor that will be rewarded with her love and appreciation).
For the entire five episodes we see him railing against Masterson’s control, seemingly unable to shrug free of the man’s influence and remaining completely in his thrall despite repeated assertions that he wants to be his own man. When he makes his bid for freedom, the only thing he can think to do is go to Donaldson, another rich, upper-class white man who, just as he did with Louie, promises protection only to promptly turn him in (should have seen that one coming, Julian...). Although Julian expresses a wish to “hide inside your wonderful life” and voices his envy at how enclosed and private Donaldson’s lifestyle is, the man forces him to confront Masterson, and almost immediately, Julian is cowed straight back into submission. There’s only one option open to him now.
By the time he’s at the diner where he plans to commit suicide, it’s clear that he’s unable to deal with his inability to overcome his environment, and a combination of guilt, the desire to be free, and an impulse to punish both Donaldson and Masterson is what drives him to put the gun to his head. This last motive is indicated by his bitter words to the two men:
Isn’t it wonderful to be able to select a young person, to give them a chance, to transform their lives just like that...” [on being told that they don’t have a lot of time] “I don’t believe you Walter. It’s your private plan, after all, and we know now what you can do with private planes. Get them to take you to France at very short notice. Even in the middle of the night. And get them to stamp your passport with all sorts of different times when a little money changes hands. You two can do anything you want, can’t you. Nothing really inconveniences you. After all, these people here, they might lose everything, just like that, there might be another crash - but you two will just float above it, always able to float. Nothing can touch you. And me too of course, am I any different? No. I can float just as well as anybody else. We always come out on top. We sail through it all. The three of us. Together.
He’s fighting back tears at this stage; and like so many other characters at this point, has lost control of his carefully cultivated charade. And so there’s a twisted sort of honour in the way Julian decides to end himself. He’s recognised that he’s indistinguishable from the likes of Masterson and Donaldson in regards to the terrifying level of privilege he’s soaked in and his immunity from any consequences (thus leading to him symbolically pointing the gun at both men before shooting himself), he rejects the escape from the law that Masterson has organised for him, passes on a written confession that admits his guilt, and ends his self-loathing.
His true motivations in killing Jessie remain somewhat obscure, though in his last words it’s easy enough to assume that he tried to force himself on her, she resisted, and he ended up killing her. Poliakoff hints at what may have happened by staging a probable recreation of the lead-up to Jessie’s murder between Julian and Carla. In it, Julian comes to say goodbye to Carla, makes her nervous with his intensity when he tries to kiss her hand (maybe uses her as a proxy for Jessie at this point?) and looks to be on the verge of an attack when he’s interrupted by Schlesinger. Maybe this is the turning point for him, when he realizes how uncontrollably dangerous he is when rejected, deciding at this point that the only way to save himself and others is by putting a bullet in his head.
Yet it’s still unclear as to why a rejection ended in Jessie’s death. Was he ashamed of his attraction to her, based on his mother’s attitudes? Was he a spoiled child who wasn’t used to being said “no” to? Does his weird relationship with his mother and sister lead him to violence when other women attract/reject him? Was Poliakoff hinting at a non-consensual sexual relationship between Masterson and Julian that he was desperate to escape - first through a less powerful woman and then via suicide? Has he been conditioned by Masterson to believe that women are simply chattel, à la the bruised/drunk woman that Louie helped him move? Or was he just a psychopath with a Jekyll and Hyde persona, who we briefly glimpse with Carla? That remains one of the many mysteries left in Dancing on the Edge.
***
Naturally, on hearing the news of his suicide Pamela blames herself for not being with him, though she’s already proven herself his antithesis. Both were fragile and nervy individuals, yet despite her horrendous mother and hypocritical brother, Pamela acts out of a genuine sense of right and wrong and with the conviction to actually do something about an injustice when she perceives it.
So she began as a foil to her brother, each characterized as lazy, diffident, callow members of the upper-class, though in truth, the ending reveals that she was most like Louie in personality. They both had the same implacable nature, and both had constructed an outer façade in order to cope with the world around them: for Pamela it’s an icy, detached demeanour, and for Louie it’s a front of intense calm, politeness and stoicism at all times. Both of these veneers crack over the course of the final episode: Louie begins to struggle under the pressure despite stating “I refuse to panic now”, and Pamela is reduced to tears and hysterics when she hears the news that Julian has killed himself, but it ends up being a fitting juxtaposition that the two most unlikely characters were actually the most alike in nature.
So though Julian dies, and though Pamela half-knowingly sacrificed in him the interests of saving Louie, she herself manages to escape her fate, redefining herself in the eyes of Stanley, her strength and grief moving him enough to admit that he loves her.
At least, that was my take on the whole thing. Any thoughts?
So Dancing on the Edge deliberately leaves some crucial pieces of the puzzle missing. This is always a risky move for screenwriters to make, for though it can leave things suitably opaque, reminding us that - as in life - we’ll never get the full story on anything or anyone, it can also render the story a little unsatisfying. Still, in this case I think it works. I can appreciate a story that doesn’t feel the need to spell out every little detail and trusts that I’m not an idiot in piecing it all together. The audience may need to exercise their imagination in order to fill in some of the blanks, but the clues are all there; usually in little easy-to-miss scenes (as when Julian shows Stanley that he’s in possession of a small, sharp trowel which was almost certainly the murder weapon).
There are a lot of themes packed into the series, but I’ve narrowed it down to just a few. One is that of escape: Pamela manages to escape her stifling life, Louie escapes the injustice that would see him thrown into prison, Julian achieves a twisted sort of escape by killing himself, and all the rest manage to escape the clutches of Masterson’s overwhelming level of control that he attempts to exert over each of them.
Another is that all of the characters, with the exception of Stanley and Pamela, proved themselves to be racist despite their superficial acceptance of the jazz band. All of them assumed Louie was either guilty of the murder despite overwhelming lack of evidence or were more than ready to let him take the blame in order to protect one of their own. The idea of the band being the talented but ultimately powerless playthings of the rich and bored was always going to be one of the more obvious premises of the show, but Poliakoff was fairly ruthless in his depiction of his white characters (bar a handful) failing Louie when he needed them most. Sarah is alone, the budding intergeneration friendship of Lavinia/Stanley is destroyed, Masterson’s schemes failed, and Julian took his own life. It’s a rather dark close on a show that was initially quite uplifting, in which for a brief moment structures of class and race were lifted ever-so-briefly through a shared love of jazz music, only for it all to come crashing down on everyone’s heads.
But of course, common human decency finally prevails, at least in small amounts, leading to another theme - that change happens, but only a little at a time. By the end, Stanley and Rosie have returned to the old Music Express headquarters... but Eric is with them along with all the new-fangled technology that he represents. The old entertainers are brought back to the Imperial after the Louie Lester band breaks up... but Carla is there every week to sing. That the show bows out on her voice, in which the camera moves through the doors of the Imperial to rest on Carla singing on the stage in her velvety dress was a perfect send-off.
Bits and Pieces
Whilst Louie is on the run, Poliakoff takes the concept of “hiding in plain sight” way, WAY too far, what with Pamela and Sarah leading him to a busy bowl’s club and pretending that Louie is their servant. Hmm, two young women, one of which is obviously distraught, going into a bowl’s club full of over-sixties, along with a black man in an evening jacket and an injured hand - yeah, that’s not going to attract any attention at all.
There is a truly fantastic camera shot when Julian goes to Donaldson’s house and speaks to him from across the garden. We see Donaldson from Julian’s point-of-view, and the entire frame is filled with the branches of a tree - except for a tiny little space where you can just see Anthony Head’s face.
Speaking of that scene, it’s a striking moment when Julian is wandering Donaldson’s garden and the memory of Jessie’s voice fills the grounds; something which is figuratively echoed in Louie’s escape; his mode of transport eerily fitting with the song: “The Midnight Express.” The countdown to Julian’s suicide is intercut with Louie’s successful disappearance into the night, and it manages to be an immensely suspenseful sequence without the need for any car chases or police fire.
There’s also a chance for Carla to finally shine, in which she has to play the part of the diva in order to divert attention away from Louie and give them all a reason to be heading for Paris.
And at one point, Louie does get to play a part in his own rescue - during the period in which they’re all hiding out at the music club, Deirdre stashes them in a room where a ballet class is taking place. By the time Stanley and Eric arrive, Louie’s taken it upon himself to play the piano for the girls in order to allow their teacher to watch them more closely. When the police arrive demanding to know his whereabouts, none of the girls give him away. It’s unlikely, but sweet.
There’s another wonderful scene in which Stanley has returned to the new Musical Express offices and is been shown all the new and wonderful plans for publication - at this point the soundtrack is composed of very soft and quick violins, like a heart beginning to speed up, and you can tell that it’s the moment Stanley realizes that his soul is at stake and that he’s going to reject all this in order to help out his friend.
But the only character I couldn’t really put my finger on was Donaldson. I found myself second and third guessing his true personality and motivations throughout the whole thing, and by the end of it I still don’t really know what to make of him. At different points he came across as callous, gentle, scheming, caring, manipulative, naïve; the same man who gently coaxes Jessie out of her coma and comforts a tearful waitress after Julian’s suicide is also the same man who casually writes off Louie and calls the police after locking him in his kitchen.
But of course we never actually see this happening, and the next time he appears it’s at the hotel in which he seems completely composed. Nor do we see him explain what happened when Louie ran away into the night; we only hear his excuses second-hand from Sarah. And nor did we get a clear answer on the circumstances surrounding Wesley’s deportment (Donaldson was the one who was meant to make the all-important phone call). It’s like Poliakoff deliberately wants to leave his actions ambiguous.
Unlike all the other characters, Donaldson’s mask never crumbles, not for a moment. He seems to just drift through the series (and a comfortable life) without much passion or drive, as though he’s forgotten how to care about anything. The closest we get to insight on his character is when he shares with Julian a desire to close himself away in his house: “I like that; the idea of hiding away from one’s troubles. Sometimes when I walk out into this garden I think I can just shut the door and live here. I’ve got everything I need. Food; the occasional delightful companion to come in through the little door in the wall - I need never go out again or be bothered by what’s happening on the other side of the wall.”
So I really don’t know what to make of this guy, and Anthony Head plays him as enigmatic as they come. Perhaps I should amend my statement that Julian was the show’s most mysterious character - clearly Donaldson is.
***
So there you have it; that was Dancing on the Edge. I think the final two episodes certainly improve the first three, and that the excruciatingly slow pacing is worth it if you’re patient and if each episode is leisurely drawn out over the course of five nights (most people would have seen it that way anyway). All official blurbs that states the series is “about a jazz band in the 1930s” should be replaced with the amendment that it’s “about the impact of a jazz band in the 1930s”, but apart from that, I found myself enjoying it, and by the length of this post, it clearly gave me food for thought.
Plus, Angel sings.
1. Angel is amazing
2. As suspected, it’s more about white aristocrats than black musicians
3. Pacing is achingly slow and dialogue quite stilted
4. Angel looks and sounds glorious
5. Pamela and Julian are probably the most interesting characters
6. It’s a beautiful rendering of 1930s culture, clothing, architecture, music, cars, and current events
7.Did I mention Angel?
There Will Be Spoilers
The first three episodes deal with the rise of the Louie Lester band, which manages to land itself an extended gig to play at the Imperial Hotel in London. Their band leader Louie is helped out by a range of upper-class white folks, including music journalist Stanley Mitchell, aristocratic siblings Pamela and Julian Lascombe, photographer Sarah Peters, American millionaire Walter Masterson, enigmatic “collector” Arthur Donaldson, and eventually the widowed and reclusive Lavinia Cremone.
Despite a few odd occurrences (mostly to do with the strange dynamic that exists between Masterson and Julian, the latter employed by the former in a rather ambiguous capacity) and the ever-tenuous position of a black jazz band in white society, things are looking good for Louie, particularly when he begins a relationship with Sarah.
But naturally, disaster strikes. After playing for the Prince of Wales, Louie returns to the hotel with the rest of the band to find Jessie bleeding heavily from a stab wound. Mysterious circumstances surround the attack - though it seems clear that Jessie feigned an illness to get out of singing for the Prince in order to meet with Julian instead, neither the audience nor any of the other characters are privy to what exactly happened between the two of them that led to her eventual death. Louie only knows that he saw Julian leaving the hotel a few minutes before he found Jessie, though witnesses and travelling documents state that he was most definitely on a train to Paris at the time.
By the time Jessie succumbs to her injuries, Julian seems well and truly in the clear, despite Louie’s suspicions that he’s the killer. But naturally, his watertight alibi (that could have easily been constructed by his doting employer) puts him in the clear, and without any other leads, the police are all-too-ready to place the blame on Louie.
The final two episodes deal with the fallout of Jessie’s death, and the last one in particular is the only one that is not framed as a flashback kick-started from Louie’s point-of-view. Previous episodes all began with a short prologue in which Louie is hiding out at the offices of the Music Express magazine, but now that the memories have caught up with reality, you get the sense that there’s a more objective look at all the characters and their actions in the final ninety minutes.
From this set-up, two distinctive storylines and themes emerge - for Louie it’s a question of who he can trust. Paranoia threatens to overcome his common sense, and since the narrative gives him very little agency in his escape from the law, he’s forced to rely on people that are grappling against the immense temptation of turning him in, whether it be for monetary gain or to protect themselves.
And for Louie’s self-proclaimed open-minded “white allies” (i.e. the rest of the cast), it involves being confronted by the reality of how forward-thinking they truly are when the going gets tough, and how much they’re willing to compromise their principles under the influence of material reward or threat of personal harm. To Poliakoff’s credit, he doesn’t go as easy on them as I initially assumed he would, as most of them are all too eager to wash their hands of Louie and/or deliberately try to turn him in at the first sign of trouble.
Ultimately, who Louie can trust among his white allies is a short list of three: Stanley (obviously), Pamela (surprisingly) and Eric (somewhat irrelevantly; he’s really just there for plot purposes).
(Though it’s worth saying that whilst Carla eventually gets to play an important role in smuggling Louie to safety, the band itself is once more shunted to the side).
***
So my feelings about Dancing on the Edge went roughly as follows: excited --> disappointed --> intrigued --> reasonably satisfied. Having seen it in its entirety, the power of hindsight allows me to make some amendments on my initial reactions as stated in my first review.
First of all, I actually think that the extremely slow pacing pays off. After Jessie’s death, a growing sense of unease begins to emerge, and Poliakoff is exceptionally good at creating moments of what I’ve decided to call “sudden disconcertment.” These moments occasionally popped up in the first three episodes, as when Louie is called to a hotel room at Julian’s behest to find the suite trashed and a drunk, bruised girl on the bed. It’s an alarming situation, all the more so because we arrive after the tumult, and are given no indication then or later as to what actually happened. There are other such moments: the secretive presence of the freemasons in the basement, half-glimpsed arguments between Julian and Masterson, the future king dancing intimately with a woman while her husband watches uncomfortably, a performance being interrupted because of the assassination attempt on the American President. They generate a distinct feeling of discomfort and the sense that the rug could be pulled out from under one’s feet at any time.
This type of thing happens more frequently in the last two episodes, some of which had me biting my fingernails. The first is when the net starts to close around Louie, though only he is aware of it. The police are beginning to question his claim that he saw Julian at the hotel before Jessie’s death, and restage the event for Louie with an unidentified man at the end of the hall that he can’t properly distinguish. It's hard to describe until you see it for yourself, but there's something eerie about the whole scenario. Furthermore, journalists are pooling about everywhere, particularly one who has a genuinely creepy face (the camera lingers on her long and often enough to make you think she’s important, but apparently she was just singled out for her immensely disturbing features). From Louie’s perspective, smiles are starting to look fake; people are caught staring.
It accumulates in the new offices of Music Express, Masterson having announced his decision to buy the magazine and re-establish it in a swanky new building. His business partner in this endeavour is Lady Lavinia Cremone, and the likes of Stanley, Rosie and Eric have been hired with significant increases in their pay checks. Julian is already in Masterson’s employ, and Sarah is suddenly offered a job as a photographer. From the outskirts of the group, Louie witnesses all this happening and begins to wander through the building, seeing people at the end of corridors and through doorways in the otherwise empty rooms, hearing excitement and joy in their voices, knowing that he isn’t a part of it.
By this point, the paranoia has well and truly seeped in; both for Louie and the audience. It’s a nightmarish sequence that’s achieved through the combination of camera techniques, slow motion, and the appalled look on Chiwetel Ejiofor’s face as Louie realizes that all his white chums are being scooped up by an American millionaire with close ties to the youth Louie suspects of murdering Jessie. At this stage you really get the sense that he’s trapped in some bizarre fantasy world where he’s the only one who can see the conspiracy taking shape around him; in which Masterson is deliberately taking control of his allies, setting them up to turn against Louie without them even realizing it. You can feel what little control he has slipping away.
From here Louie realizes that he has to go fetch a lawyer, and he and Sarah go to Donaldson for help. By now you’re well and truly on edge (no pun intended) and there’s another disconcerting moment when two little girls answer the door. They’re introduced as Donaldson’s niece and her friend, but by this point, Poliakoff has cultivated such an atmosphere that it’s impossible not to think that there’s something innately off-putting about their presence, even though there’s absolutely nothing to suggest that anything untoward is going on between them and Donaldson. It’s simply that by now you’re been conditioned to think the absolute worst of any given situation.
So Donaldson calls for a lawyer, assuring Louie that he’s on his way, and once Sarah has left, he begins to babble amiably about his travels and the antics of the children whilst Louie sits there, knowing that his arrest is imminent. Donaldson’s cheerfulness becomes both grating and false; he, the children and the bright sunny day all offset Louie’s jitteriness, but he’s so exhausted that he slips into sleep. He has a creepy dream of course, which includes Jessie’s dead body and a man placing a hood over his head, and when he awakes it’s to find that night has fallen, the door has been locked, and there’s no sign of anyone about. One of the little girls looks through the misty window in the door, refusing to unlock it or even say anything, and when Louie makes his escape through the kitchen window, he notes almost wonderingly that: “they took the knives...”
Louie’s calm demeanour has cracked, and like the scenario concerning the unconscious girl in Masterson’s hotel room, we’re given not definitive answer as to what exactly was going on, rendering it remarkably effective in how unnerving it all is. Did Sarah really go to meet her father? Did Donaldson really call the lawyer? Did Louie fall asleep or was he drugged somehow? What exactly happened when Donaldson realized Louie was unconscious?
As I said earlier, this is where I have to give Poliakoff some credit. In my first review I stated that would have preferred it if the story had been told strictly from the band’s point-of-view as they tried to negotiate this glitzy, dangerous world where half the population is affronted by their mere presence and the other half is treating them as “exotic pets” (so long as they remain well-behaved), which would have made Louie’s escape even more terrifying and nerve-wracking. But not getting that, I acknowledge that despite Poliakoff’s vested interest in the aristocrats rather than the band, he doesn’t let his white characters off the hook that easily.
Before ever watching a single minute of the show, I assumed that the storyline would inevitably depict white society turning on Louie. After watching the first three episodes I began to assume that Louie’s friends would all rally to his defence and take a stand against oppression in a celebration of how enlightened and wonderful they were. But as it turns out, the series takes the middle road by revealing that most of them do turn out to be either corrupt, hypocritical or simply weak.
Now, there’s no real mystery surrounding the fact that Julian killed Jessie - he may as well have “guilty” written on his forehead, and so despite his endless reiterations of “dear friend” it’s clear that he’s initially complicit in letting Louie go down for his crime. As well as this, Masterson (played incredibly well by John Goodman as both amicable and sinister) puts out a huge reward for Louie’s arrest and takes control of Music Express in a partial bid to gain leverage over Louie’s friends. Thus all the rest become tempted to one agree or another: Stanley is given the chance to expand the magazine under Masterson’s control (bringing in the themes of communication and the control of information; for as Rosie keeps telling him, he won’t have the same freedom working under Masterson), as well as a massive pay check. When Stanley goes to Lavinia for help in hiding Stanley, she makes it clear that she wishes to wash her hands of the whole situation, stating: “this was always the likely outcome, a negro band in a hotel” and scolding Stanley when he asks her to help, saying: “this is our first day [on the magazine] and I was really looking forward to it...now you bring me chaos.” Her life had been rejuvenated, and now she’s irritated that Louie exists as an impediment to that.
Sarah is also caught in Masterson’s net, being offered a job as head photographer on the magazine, and refusing to believe that those around her would be willing to betray Louie, going so far as to believe Donaldson’s smoothly concocted lies that justify exactly how and why Louie ended up locked in the kitchen (apparently the lawyer was delayed and they locked him in so that the children wouldn’t disturb his sleep).
Naturally, employees of the hotel are either helpless (Schlesinger) or malevolent (Harry) and though assistance is given by Eric and Deirdre, they’re minor characters anyway, and have little to either gain or lose by helping out. For the most part, they’re mainly just plot points.
Now, I’ll have more on Julian, Pamela and Donaldson in a bit, but for now, suffice to say that this condemnation of the characters in regards to their reactions to Louie's predicament surprised me. In particular, I had Sarah pegged as Poliakoff’s “special one”. Every writer seems to have one, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing: a character that more often than not embodies the writer’s viewpoint and acts as an audience stand-in; representing the ideal reaction of what most people would like to think of themselves in a similar situation. I had previously noted that Poliakoff seemed to be characterizing Sarah as the progressive and free-spirited heroine, a counterpoint to the vain and superfluous Pamela, the person most likely to single-handedly save Louie with her fire and passion. This was despite several scenes that demonstrated (perhaps accidentally) that she was rather clueless in several respects. I wasn’t sure whether or not these little hints were deliberate, as when dealing with writer’s favourites they’re usually somewhat blind to their flaws, but it turns out I was half right (and my theory that Sarah's photographs would yield an important clue was dead wrong).
Though Sarah remains largely sympathetic, there are signs that she’s of weaker character than we’d previously been led to believe. Despite Louie’s insistence that he saw Julian at the hotel, Sarah suggests that it was one of the journalists or a crazed fan that stabbed Jessie, refusing to believe that Julian was involved. Later, when Louie calls her after he’s escaped from Donaldson’s house, she’s insulted that Louie doesn’t trust her and insists that he return to the hotel. She believes that those gathered there will instantly rally to his side, and is affronted that Louie thinks they’d all turn on him so fast (even though most of them already have). Later her comments are more to do with her feelings than Louie’s predicament, stating: “I can’t bear the thought that you don’t trust me,” and “It hurts so much that you don’t trust me.”
At one point she almost gives the game away by crying in public, and it’s Pamela who must tell her: “you’ve got to hold your nerve,” (a far cry from their previous interactions, in which Sarah made a few jibes at Pamela’s expense) and who is then distracted by her need to be at the Musical Express offices for a meeting over the magazine’s future, where she is at once delighted and distracted by the camera that Masterson has bought for her.
I don’t want to be too hard on her, for though Louie is right not to trust Donaldson or to return to the hotel, his initial lack of faith in Sarah is misplaced in regards to her intentions, if not her actions. And yet Sarah does eventually succumb to the police investigation when her father’s safety (as a Russian immigrant) is threatened, and tips them off as to Louie’s location. So Louie’s mistrust is vindicated, being pre-emptively aware that she would fail him, even if it was in sympathetic circumstances.
It’s a sad scenario; in which the police essentially use each one’s vulnerability against the other, and though Sarah’s last scene involves her declaring that she’s going to reconcile with Louie, given his demeanour toward her in their last two telephone conversations it doesn’t seem likely that he’d reciprocate even if she did succeed in tracking him down.
***
And yet from Sarah’s failure emerges an entirely unexpected source of heroism: Pamela. Her role in Louie’s escape comes as a big surprise, and yet she ends up utterly critical to his freedom. It initially seems an odd storytelling choice to make, though on reflection it’s set-up quite well. Joanna Vanderham’s rather pallid appearance and emotionless delivery (both of which I think were entirely deliberate) lends her character a rather distant, lethargic air that makes her the last person you’d expect to come to Louie’s rescue. Throughout the series she’s had little interaction with Louie, and has been treated as little more than an afterthought by the other characters: ushered out of various rooms, excluded from plenty of conversations, and been the subject of many passive-aggressive comments, made by both by herself and others. And yet it through it all she’s depicted as quietly watchful; observing and listening and understanding what’s really going on around her, even when others don’t.
Her acquired upper-class listlessness is thus revealed as shrewdness and bravery, and at the dinner party that’s held in Mr Masterson’s honour (occurring concurrently with Louie going into hiding), she stands up and makes the following speech, which in hindsight seems defiant and even challenging:
I want to pay tribute to how everyone seems to be working for you now, Mr Masterson. Everybody except for me. And I’m sure that’s how it should be because I have no speciality of any kind and am quite unqualified for regular work. But I am sure it is a wonderful thing to be working for Mr Masterson. He will take care of my brother too in his career over the ocean. For my brother is a very sensitive person. So my toast, my toast is to you. I’m sure you will all prosper in the ways that you want - what you’ve set your hearts on by working for Mr Masterson.
It’s reads as totally scathing, even though you don’t hear a shred of it in her voice; but it’s clear at this stage that she knows full well that Julian killed Jessie, that Masterson is buying off all those who might speak up for Louie, and that they’re all damned if they go through with the deal he’s offering them. As she herself points out, only she is excluded from his designs, and so she alone manages to remain a “free agent” (so to speak). When Louie later asks her why she’s helping him, she rejects the implication that it’s out of guilt over what they both suspect Julian did to Jessie, and informs him that it’s because she truly believes he’s innocent. Between Louie vehemently voicing his distrust of Sarah and accusing Stanley of helping him only for the sake of a good story, he remains a little dumbfounded by Pamela’s presence, who goes on to disguise Louie in servant’s clothes, pay for the first class train tickets, and get rid of a porter on the train asking for passports.
A cynic might point out that she has the least to lose if she’s caught assisting in Louie’s escape (let’s face it, if the police were to discover she was involved, she probably wouldn’t face particularly dire consequences) and yet the narrative does set up a definitive choice for her in the final act: help Louie or protect Julian. For at the same time Louie’s escape to France via the train is going ahead, Julian is trying to finagle his own escape attempt, becoming something of a fugitive himself in his desperate bid to free himself from Masterson and the strange hold that the man has over him.
Julian is a tricky figure to pin down because Poliakoff gives us only a few clues about what exactly is going on in his head at any given time, rendering him the most enigmatic character of the ensemble. A part of me is frustrated at this, because I want to dismiss him as a spoiled little ass who kills an innocent girl, but I suppose I’d better try and be a bit more nuanced than that. So much of Julian’s story occurs off-screen (including the killing itself) that he remains a distant figure from start to finish, and I think people could walk away with drastically different takes on what who this character really was. Yet admittedly, the clues are there.
Personally, I saw Julian as a young man who was desperate to be loved by those he admired. He likes to think of himself as part of a progressive vanguard that stands for liberalism and forward-thinking, all whilst becoming painfully aware (especially after Jessie’s murder) that he’s part of the establishment that exploits and ultimately destroys people like Jessie and Louie.
There’s clearly a childhood trauma involved for he despises his mother, telling his sister at one point: “How on earth did we come out of that person? How are we a part of her?” and voicing a desire to “fill the house with Jews and negroes” which seems to be born just as much out of a rejection of his mother’s attitudes as it is self-reassurance of his own innate goodness and open-mindedness.
Tom Hughes put on a good show of jittery mannerisms and overly intense speech patterns, which don’t do much to hide the fact that there’s an intense psychotic charge lurking somewhere inside him. Throughout the entire series, everyone always seems a little off-put by this young man and the concentrated intensity he emanates, and so he’s unable to really connect with any of them on the level he wants. Jessie is the only one who really gives him any attention, and it’s clear that a part of that is because he’s filled her head with promises of stardom that he alone can acquire for her (perhaps seeing himself as her generous benefactor that will be rewarded with her love and appreciation).
For the entire five episodes we see him railing against Masterson’s control, seemingly unable to shrug free of the man’s influence and remaining completely in his thrall despite repeated assertions that he wants to be his own man. When he makes his bid for freedom, the only thing he can think to do is go to Donaldson, another rich, upper-class white man who, just as he did with Louie, promises protection only to promptly turn him in (should have seen that one coming, Julian...). Although Julian expresses a wish to “hide inside your wonderful life” and voices his envy at how enclosed and private Donaldson’s lifestyle is, the man forces him to confront Masterson, and almost immediately, Julian is cowed straight back into submission. There’s only one option open to him now.
By the time he’s at the diner where he plans to commit suicide, it’s clear that he’s unable to deal with his inability to overcome his environment, and a combination of guilt, the desire to be free, and an impulse to punish both Donaldson and Masterson is what drives him to put the gun to his head. This last motive is indicated by his bitter words to the two men:
Isn’t it wonderful to be able to select a young person, to give them a chance, to transform their lives just like that...” [on being told that they don’t have a lot of time] “I don’t believe you Walter. It’s your private plan, after all, and we know now what you can do with private planes. Get them to take you to France at very short notice. Even in the middle of the night. And get them to stamp your passport with all sorts of different times when a little money changes hands. You two can do anything you want, can’t you. Nothing really inconveniences you. After all, these people here, they might lose everything, just like that, there might be another crash - but you two will just float above it, always able to float. Nothing can touch you. And me too of course, am I any different? No. I can float just as well as anybody else. We always come out on top. We sail through it all. The three of us. Together.
He’s fighting back tears at this stage; and like so many other characters at this point, has lost control of his carefully cultivated charade. And so there’s a twisted sort of honour in the way Julian decides to end himself. He’s recognised that he’s indistinguishable from the likes of Masterson and Donaldson in regards to the terrifying level of privilege he’s soaked in and his immunity from any consequences (thus leading to him symbolically pointing the gun at both men before shooting himself), he rejects the escape from the law that Masterson has organised for him, passes on a written confession that admits his guilt, and ends his self-loathing.
His true motivations in killing Jessie remain somewhat obscure, though in his last words it’s easy enough to assume that he tried to force himself on her, she resisted, and he ended up killing her. Poliakoff hints at what may have happened by staging a probable recreation of the lead-up to Jessie’s murder between Julian and Carla. In it, Julian comes to say goodbye to Carla, makes her nervous with his intensity when he tries to kiss her hand (maybe uses her as a proxy for Jessie at this point?) and looks to be on the verge of an attack when he’s interrupted by Schlesinger. Maybe this is the turning point for him, when he realizes how uncontrollably dangerous he is when rejected, deciding at this point that the only way to save himself and others is by putting a bullet in his head.
Yet it’s still unclear as to why a rejection ended in Jessie’s death. Was he ashamed of his attraction to her, based on his mother’s attitudes? Was he a spoiled child who wasn’t used to being said “no” to? Does his weird relationship with his mother and sister lead him to violence when other women attract/reject him? Was Poliakoff hinting at a non-consensual sexual relationship between Masterson and Julian that he was desperate to escape - first through a less powerful woman and then via suicide? Has he been conditioned by Masterson to believe that women are simply chattel, à la the bruised/drunk woman that Louie helped him move? Or was he just a psychopath with a Jekyll and Hyde persona, who we briefly glimpse with Carla? That remains one of the many mysteries left in Dancing on the Edge.
***
Naturally, on hearing the news of his suicide Pamela blames herself for not being with him, though she’s already proven herself his antithesis. Both were fragile and nervy individuals, yet despite her horrendous mother and hypocritical brother, Pamela acts out of a genuine sense of right and wrong and with the conviction to actually do something about an injustice when she perceives it.
So she began as a foil to her brother, each characterized as lazy, diffident, callow members of the upper-class, though in truth, the ending reveals that she was most like Louie in personality. They both had the same implacable nature, and both had constructed an outer façade in order to cope with the world around them: for Pamela it’s an icy, detached demeanour, and for Louie it’s a front of intense calm, politeness and stoicism at all times. Both of these veneers crack over the course of the final episode: Louie begins to struggle under the pressure despite stating “I refuse to panic now”, and Pamela is reduced to tears and hysterics when she hears the news that Julian has killed himself, but it ends up being a fitting juxtaposition that the two most unlikely characters were actually the most alike in nature.
So though Julian dies, and though Pamela half-knowingly sacrificed in him the interests of saving Louie, she herself manages to escape her fate, redefining herself in the eyes of Stanley, her strength and grief moving him enough to admit that he loves her.
At least, that was my take on the whole thing. Any thoughts?
So Dancing on the Edge deliberately leaves some crucial pieces of the puzzle missing. This is always a risky move for screenwriters to make, for though it can leave things suitably opaque, reminding us that - as in life - we’ll never get the full story on anything or anyone, it can also render the story a little unsatisfying. Still, in this case I think it works. I can appreciate a story that doesn’t feel the need to spell out every little detail and trusts that I’m not an idiot in piecing it all together. The audience may need to exercise their imagination in order to fill in some of the blanks, but the clues are all there; usually in little easy-to-miss scenes (as when Julian shows Stanley that he’s in possession of a small, sharp trowel which was almost certainly the murder weapon).
There are a lot of themes packed into the series, but I’ve narrowed it down to just a few. One is that of escape: Pamela manages to escape her stifling life, Louie escapes the injustice that would see him thrown into prison, Julian achieves a twisted sort of escape by killing himself, and all the rest manage to escape the clutches of Masterson’s overwhelming level of control that he attempts to exert over each of them.
Another is that all of the characters, with the exception of Stanley and Pamela, proved themselves to be racist despite their superficial acceptance of the jazz band. All of them assumed Louie was either guilty of the murder despite overwhelming lack of evidence or were more than ready to let him take the blame in order to protect one of their own. The idea of the band being the talented but ultimately powerless playthings of the rich and bored was always going to be one of the more obvious premises of the show, but Poliakoff was fairly ruthless in his depiction of his white characters (bar a handful) failing Louie when he needed them most. Sarah is alone, the budding intergeneration friendship of Lavinia/Stanley is destroyed, Masterson’s schemes failed, and Julian took his own life. It’s a rather dark close on a show that was initially quite uplifting, in which for a brief moment structures of class and race were lifted ever-so-briefly through a shared love of jazz music, only for it all to come crashing down on everyone’s heads.
But of course, common human decency finally prevails, at least in small amounts, leading to another theme - that change happens, but only a little at a time. By the end, Stanley and Rosie have returned to the old Music Express headquarters... but Eric is with them along with all the new-fangled technology that he represents. The old entertainers are brought back to the Imperial after the Louie Lester band breaks up... but Carla is there every week to sing. That the show bows out on her voice, in which the camera moves through the doors of the Imperial to rest on Carla singing on the stage in her velvety dress was a perfect send-off.
Bits and Pieces
Whilst Louie is on the run, Poliakoff takes the concept of “hiding in plain sight” way, WAY too far, what with Pamela and Sarah leading him to a busy bowl’s club and pretending that Louie is their servant. Hmm, two young women, one of which is obviously distraught, going into a bowl’s club full of over-sixties, along with a black man in an evening jacket and an injured hand - yeah, that’s not going to attract any attention at all.
There is a truly fantastic camera shot when Julian goes to Donaldson’s house and speaks to him from across the garden. We see Donaldson from Julian’s point-of-view, and the entire frame is filled with the branches of a tree - except for a tiny little space where you can just see Anthony Head’s face.
Speaking of that scene, it’s a striking moment when Julian is wandering Donaldson’s garden and the memory of Jessie’s voice fills the grounds; something which is figuratively echoed in Louie’s escape; his mode of transport eerily fitting with the song: “The Midnight Express.” The countdown to Julian’s suicide is intercut with Louie’s successful disappearance into the night, and it manages to be an immensely suspenseful sequence without the need for any car chases or police fire.
There’s also a chance for Carla to finally shine, in which she has to play the part of the diva in order to divert attention away from Louie and give them all a reason to be heading for Paris.
And at one point, Louie does get to play a part in his own rescue - during the period in which they’re all hiding out at the music club, Deirdre stashes them in a room where a ballet class is taking place. By the time Stanley and Eric arrive, Louie’s taken it upon himself to play the piano for the girls in order to allow their teacher to watch them more closely. When the police arrive demanding to know his whereabouts, none of the girls give him away. It’s unlikely, but sweet.
There’s another wonderful scene in which Stanley has returned to the new Musical Express offices and is been shown all the new and wonderful plans for publication - at this point the soundtrack is composed of very soft and quick violins, like a heart beginning to speed up, and you can tell that it’s the moment Stanley realizes that his soul is at stake and that he’s going to reject all this in order to help out his friend.
But the only character I couldn’t really put my finger on was Donaldson. I found myself second and third guessing his true personality and motivations throughout the whole thing, and by the end of it I still don’t really know what to make of him. At different points he came across as callous, gentle, scheming, caring, manipulative, naïve; the same man who gently coaxes Jessie out of her coma and comforts a tearful waitress after Julian’s suicide is also the same man who casually writes off Louie and calls the police after locking him in his kitchen.
But of course we never actually see this happening, and the next time he appears it’s at the hotel in which he seems completely composed. Nor do we see him explain what happened when Louie ran away into the night; we only hear his excuses second-hand from Sarah. And nor did we get a clear answer on the circumstances surrounding Wesley’s deportment (Donaldson was the one who was meant to make the all-important phone call). It’s like Poliakoff deliberately wants to leave his actions ambiguous.
Unlike all the other characters, Donaldson’s mask never crumbles, not for a moment. He seems to just drift through the series (and a comfortable life) without much passion or drive, as though he’s forgotten how to care about anything. The closest we get to insight on his character is when he shares with Julian a desire to close himself away in his house: “I like that; the idea of hiding away from one’s troubles. Sometimes when I walk out into this garden I think I can just shut the door and live here. I’ve got everything I need. Food; the occasional delightful companion to come in through the little door in the wall - I need never go out again or be bothered by what’s happening on the other side of the wall.”
So I really don’t know what to make of this guy, and Anthony Head plays him as enigmatic as they come. Perhaps I should amend my statement that Julian was the show’s most mysterious character - clearly Donaldson is.
***
So there you have it; that was Dancing on the Edge. I think the final two episodes certainly improve the first three, and that the excruciatingly slow pacing is worth it if you’re patient and if each episode is leisurely drawn out over the course of five nights (most people would have seen it that way anyway). All official blurbs that states the series is “about a jazz band in the 1930s” should be replaced with the amendment that it’s “about the impact of a jazz band in the 1930s”, but apart from that, I found myself enjoying it, and by the length of this post, it clearly gave me food for thought.
Plus, Angel sings.
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