Dreamers review – this teen dance drama is too subtle for its own good. Where's the debauchery?
The implausibility of the teen drama may well be the genre's defining feature. In the 00s, we were subjected to untold glamour and relentless wisecracking by US imports such as The OC and Gossip Girl. The UK equivalent was Skins, in which a group of Bristolian party animals managed to make practically every personal problem known to man look intimidatingly cool. More recently, we've had mind-blowing levels of debauchery from Euphoria, mind-blowing levels of sexual literacy and candour from Sex Education and mind-blowing levels of heartwarming niceness from Heartstopper. All of it is ludicrous in its own way.
Dreamers is different. It is realistic – jarringly so. That's both a pro and a con for this Channel 4 drama about a group of teenage dancers living in Leeds. The series – written by Lisa Holdsworth (Waterloo Road) and Gem Copping (EastEnders), and directed by Sara Dunlop – is filmed in a meticulously naturalistic way. The camera tends to linger, documentary-style, on characters, whether they are doing something interesting or not: chatting aimlessly, walking to work, getting a glass of water. It's very kitchen sink, not least in the sense that there are multiple shots of actual kitchen sinks. (The show's original title was Dance School, which captures the no-frills, matter-of-fact mode far better than Dreamers.) The dialogue is sparse, underwrought and unusually true to life; the teen banter is believably awkward and sometimes people respond to questions with 'I don't know' and the conversation just sort of ends. Combined with the deluge of dancing footage – which looks brilliant and beautiful for the most part – the Dreamers aesthetic is strong and soothing: dynamic movement punctuated by shots of shabby normalcy, like a Martin Parr photograph brought to life.
Our protagonist – as much as there is one – is Puppy (Princess Nelia Mubaiwa), whose mother, Erica, runs the Chapeltown dance collective. Puppy is talented but shy, and unsure if she wants to become a professional dancer or has simply internalised her mum's dreams. At first, it seems like the star of the collective is her funny yet self-obsessed friend Koby (Demarkus Marks). But it turns out he's not much of a friend at all: as soon as Puppy also begins attracting the attention of scouts and choreographers, Koby gets very cross indeed.
The above is pretty much the entire plot of Dreamers. Aside from Puppy and Koby's rivalry (if you could even call it that; all Puppy tries to do is defuse the situation), there is only one other narrative thread – the plight of their fellow dancer Liam, whose letdown of a mum keeps leaving him to look after his younger sisters. If you thought the dance element might just be a backdrop for a heavier story about love or sex or drugs or social capital or anything else, you will be disappointed: this show is very much about dancing.
Sometimes, the subject is treated with compelling insiderishness – at a video shoot for the Leeds rapper Graft, Koby and Puppy are first praised then emotionally pummelled by the choreography team in an example of treatment that appears to be the industry standard – and the show is good at immersing the audience in a specific strata of the amateur dance world without overexplaining things. But that also means the stakes can be very vague. For most of the series, I was under the impression the collective had qualified for some kind of competition, but in the end we don't even see the event, let alone find out its significance. Pretty much all plot developments are conveyed with that kind of understatement; there is nothing as crass as climactic revelation here. Only a lack of profundity or peril prevents Dreamers from resembling an impressionistic indie film.
It's not exactly boring. In fact, this is an easy show to binge, and the more I watch, the more I find myself drawn in by the languid vibe and Puppy's steely sweetness. It's also a treat to see a group of predominantly Black British characters living somewhere other than London (a special mention, too, for the addictively earwormy theme song from Leeds musician Ntantu). Yet, at times this makes you crave the ridiculously high-stakes plotting and comical caricatures of teen dramas past; for all its authenticity, I'm not sure there's enough here to grab hold of the flighty attention spans of its target audience. Dreamers is a pleasingly low-key antidote to the worst excesses of its genre – yet it also has something to learn from its more ruthlessly entertaining peers.
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