Interesting, extraordinary, important: Stephen Poliakoff's Dancing on the Edge

Dancing on the Edge, the five-part BBC2 series whose final episode will be broadcast on Monday, has all the hallmarks of a late-period Stephen Poliakoff artefact: sumptuous settings; deep focus shots revealing a wealth of period detail; an Expressionist use of colour with lots of vibrant, Meaningful Red; a camera that lingers on black and white photographs; mouthwatering scenes of feasting that bring together unlikely combinations of people; and the looming shadow of fascism. So far, so familiar. But predictability maketh the auteur and Poliakoff’s latest extravaganza has been anticipated and analysed by Britain’s television commentariat with almost as much relish as a new film by Lynch or Tarantino; The Guardian, for example, has been running an online episode-by-episode guide to the programme. The question is: is Poliakoff’s drama worthy of the hype?