The Beiderbecke Trilogy

Premise

The Beiderbecke Trilogy follows two schoolteachers in Leeds, Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne. Jill is a passionate conservationist focused on environmental and social causes, while Trevor prefers jazz, football, and snooker and shows little interest in her concerns. The more determined of the two, Jill often persuades Trevor to join her political activities. Across the three serials—The Beiderbecke Affair, The Beiderbecke Tapes, and The Beiderbecke Connection—the pair accidentally stumble into strange adventures involving political corruption, nuclear waste dumping, and serious fraud. Each story’s plot wanders through seemingly disconnected events that eventually link together, but the heart of the series lies in the witty interactions between the characters. The episodes are accompanied by jazz music in the style of Bix Beiderbecke, performed by Frank Ricotti with Kenny Baker on cornet. Ricotti won a BAFTA for his work on The Beiderbecke Connection.

Characters

Trevor, a middle-aged woodwork teacher, is an easygoing sort who ambles through life without much in the way of ambition or firm principles. His main enthusiasm is jazz, though he also follows football and snooker. Where his football loyalties lie is unclear: he hails from Tyneside but owns a Leeds United mug, and later uses the phrase "Howay the lads!", a cry shared by Geordies and Mackems alike. At the story's start, he lives in a messy rented flat at the top of a big Victorian house and drives a battered Bedford HA van. Eventually he moves in with Jill, who occupies a small terrace house in Chapel Allerton. Trevor rarely shows interest in politics, but he naturally sides with the underdog and, if pushed, will defend Jill's left-leaning views. Jill is a liberal-minded English teacher with a concern for conservation and social issues; she once runs in a local council by-election. Her tastes run a bit more refined than Trevor's—she likes literature, old films, and classical music. She is divorced and holds unpleasant memories of her ex-husband. The history teacher at the same school, known only as Mr Carter, is a solitary figure whose only real friends seem to be Trevor and Jill. He openly fancies Jill, often asking to sit beside her and "kindle my desires." He hangs around with Trevor and Jill largely because they all despise the headmaster, Mr Wheeler. Mr Wheeler runs the school as a pedantic jobsworth, hated by both staff and pupils. He has little clue what actually goes on among them, is conservative in outlook, and freely questions the morality of his staff's private lives.

Production

Alan Plater started writing for television in the early 1960s, becoming a regular contributor to the police series Z-Cars and its spin-offs Softly, Softly and Softly, Softly: Task Force. He also wrote plays for the BBC and ITV, as well as the sitcom Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt!. His scripts were known for vividly portraying life in Northern England. In 1978, Yorkshire Television executive producer David Cunliffe asked Plater to adapt J. B. Priestley's novel The Good Companions for TV. After that, Cunliffe commissioned Plater to write four episodes of what Plater called a "non-violent thriller." Taking inspiration from Nick and Nora Charles, the detectives in the film The Thin Man, Plater aimed to contrast hardboiled thriller conventions with the ordinariness of Yorkshire life. Originally titled "Lost And Found," the scripts were completed in late 1979 and early 1980, becoming the four-part serial Get Lost!, which aired in June and July 1981 starring Alun Armstrong and Bridget Turner.

The story follows English teacher Judy Threadgold, whose husband Jim disappears. With help from her colleague, woodwork teacher Neville Keaton, Judy investigates. They uncover a secret organisation that helps people escape their mundane lives and families. Plater gave his heroes his own interests: Judy is an environmental campaigner, while Neville loves football and jazz. Neville's jazz passion drives the soundtrack, featuring re-recordings of Duke Ellington and others by Frank Ricotti and Kenny Baker. The same team later provided music for all the Beiderbecke serials.

Get Lost! drew respectable ratings, averaging 10.9 million viewers. Plater soon began a sequel, but when Alun Armstrong could not return as Neville Keaton, Plater chose not to recast the role. Instead, he created two new characters and rewrote the scripts, turning the sequel into what became The Beiderbecke Affair.