The Beiderbecke Affair
The Beiderbecke Affair is a television series produced in the United Kingdom by ITV during 1985, written by the prolific Alan Plater, whose lengthy credits in British television since the 1960s included the four-part mini series "Get Lost!" for ITV in 1981. "The Beiderbecke Affair" has a similar style to "Get Lost!", wherein Neville Keaton (Alun Armstrong) and Judy Threadgold (Bridget Turner) played in an ensemble cast. Although "The Beiderbecke Affair" was intended as a sequel to "Get Lost!", Alun Armstrong proved to be unavailable and the premise was reworked. It is the first part of  The Beiderbecke Trilogy, with the two sequel series being "The Beiderbecke Tapes" (1987) and "The Beiderbecke Connection" (1988). Plot. Rather than following a usual linear story structure, "The Beiderbecke Affair" – set in Leeds in 1985 – is a character-led drama with a plot that initially appears rather unclear, moving as it does from one seemingly unrelated event to another. These events – and the characters involved with them – are eventually shown to be interconnected. Geordie Trevor Chaplin (James Bolam) teaches woodwork, enjoys football and is passionate about jazz. Jill Swinburne (Barbara Flynn) is interested in neither football nor jazz but teaches  English and wants to help save the planet, standing in a local election as "your Conservation candidate". After Jill left her husband, her colleague Trevor began giving her lifts to school and from there a relationship blossomed. They have an easy-going relationship where half the words seem to be left unspoken but the viewer is never in any doubt as to the subtext. Trevor tries to buy some jazz records from a "dazzlingly beautiful platinum blonde" who calls at the door raising funds for the local Cubs’ football team. When the wrong records are delivered, a hunt begins that  draws the pair into unforeseen intrigue. Thrown into the mix are Sgt Hobson (Dominic Jephcott), a suspicious yet seemingly incompetent graduate police detective, and a pair of local black economy tradesmen, "Big Al" (Terence Rigby) and "Little Norm" (Danny Schiller), who agree to help "average-sized" Jill and Trevor with their school supplies problems. There are elements of political and social commentary, whilst bureaucracy (within the police and local government) and the educational system are frequent targets of ridicule. Setting the scene for the sequels, the series ends with Jill and Trevor 'running away to the hills' (Beamsley Beacon, Beamsley ). Unlike subsequent episodes the series ends with this scene and Big Al and Little Norm listening to the radio at their allotment; the viewer hears from this that a local senior police officer has been suspended, and a businessman and a councillor have been arrested. It is later revealed in the "Beiderbecke Tapes" that Mr McAllister and Councillor McAllister were imprisoned. It all unravels to a soundtrack of jazz music in the style of Bix Beiderbecke, performed by Frank Ricotti with Kenny Baker as featured cornet soloist. Extensive use is made of leitmotifs for the various characters. The theme song  of the series uses the actual Bix Beiderbecke instrumental "Crying All Day" by Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra released in 1927 on Okeh Records and re-released in 1941 as part of the "Hot Jazz Classic" series on Columbia Records. Characters. The cast was as follows: The actual Leeds City Council planning offices are just over the road in The Leonardo building which wasn't there at the time of filming back in 1984. Episodes. The six episodes are titled by incipit, that is, the title is simply the first spoken words heard in each episode. Home media. All three  series are available on DVD as individual boxed sets, and as a Collection DVD Set (the "Beiderbecke Trilogy"), with an additional 6 Disc Set, the "Beiderbecke Trilogy 21st Anniversary Edition" (containing the "Beiderbecke Trilogy" plus "Get Lost!", CD Soundtrack, cast interviews and commemorative booklet as special features) released for Region 2. The series is also available on Britbox. "The Beiderbecke Tapes" was released in the US on 29 September 2009. In other media. Books. There are four books associated with the series. Alan Plater's first-ever book was a novelisation of "The Beiderbecke Affair" (Methuen, 1985) and then he  originally wrote "The Beiderbecke Tapes" as a novel (Methuen, 1986) before dramatising it for ITV. Four years after the final serial aired, he novelised "The Beiderbecke Connection scripts" (Methuen, 1992). An omnibus edition "The Beiderbecke Trilogy" was released by Methuen in 1993. In 2012, the British Film Institute published a book about the series in its range examining key television shows: "BFI TV Classics: The Beiderbecke Affair" by William Gallagher. The book is non-fiction but it includes a Beiderbecke short story, "A Brief Encounter with Richard Wagner" by Alan Plater. It was written for BBC Radio 4 in the  1990s and this is its first publication in print. Accompanying the non-fiction book, the British Film Institute released an Author Video plus a series of official "Beiderbecke Affair" podcasts that include a video interview with William Gallagher and with Plater's wife, Shirley Rubinstein, plus audio commentaries by Gallagher for selected episodes of the Beiderbecke series. Show. A show called "Beiderbecke and All That Jazz" was developed in the mid 1990s, featuring Alan Plater and Kenny Baker.