Whether it’s coincidence or just dumb luck, the timing gods are smiling on Starz this weekend.
I say that because the star of its new five-episode series, “Dancing On the Edge,” is Chiwetel Ejiofor —who also happens to star in the big-screen movie “12 Years a Slave,” which has received rave reviews and is already generating Oscar buzz.
If you’re a niche cable network like Starz, this type of publicity is a gift — so you hope your new series will reap the buzzy benefits of its big-screen alter-ego.
Well . . . while “Dancing On the Edge” features what should be a compelling story, acted by a top-notch cast underscored by a terrific jazz soundtrack, it’s not quite as riveting as I expected.
That’s not to say it’s a disappointment. It isn’t. It’s just that “Dancing” moves a bit slowly and takes a while to get going — a hindrance if you’ve only got five episodes to tell your story to an audience with a short attention span.
The series opens in 1933 London and quickly flashes back 18 months. Louis Lester (Ejiofor) and his eponymously named jazz band are treading water in C-list clubs in England, making enough money to keep afloat but squeaking by professionally.
Managed by the hot-tempered Wesley (Aryion Bakare), the band is obviously talented but is saddled with the sociological baggage of being African-American in a business run by whites — catering to a white audience not so tolerant of the “colored” performers. Louis and his band — not unlike their African- American US counterparts — are banned from “mixing” with the customers, can’t enter through the front door of wherever they perform (back or side entrance, please) and are relegated to segregated dressing rooms.
A lot of that changes when music journalist Stanley Mitchell (Matthew Goode) hears Lester’s band and, impressed, gets them booked into London’s swanky Imperial Hotel. Before long, the word is out: these guys are good — really good — and when Lester hires female singers Jessie (Angel Coulby) and Carla (Wunmi Mosaku), the Louis Lester Band takes off (with a royal assist from two enthusiastic fans — Prince George and his brother, the Prince of Wales).
Not everything is peachy keen, though; there’s a creepy American millionaire named Masterson (John Goodman) who befriends the band and becomes a patron. But he’s got a dark side (he obviously beats his wafer-thin girlfriend) and you just know there are other skeletons hanging in his closet. And Wesley — who claims he was born in Wales and moved to Chicago as a youngster — is in danger of being deported back to the US on charges he raped a white woman.
That’s the tip of the “Dancing On the Edge” iceberg. The performances here are all good. Ejiofor’s Lester cuts a dashing figure (he’s the band’s piano player) but you can feel his just-underthe- surface resentment at being treated as a second-class citizen, and his disgust and contempt at the condescension of his new white friends. He retains a (mostly) sunny facade and is pragmatic, yet walks a thin emotional line he’s in danger of crossing.
Goodman can play creepy about as good as anybody and Goode, as music journalist Mitchell, is fine.
If only the show’s pacing matched its zippy musical score.