Trevor Chaplin (James Bolam), Mr Carter (Dudley Sutton), and Jill Swinburne (Barbara Flynn) — in the school cafeteria (see Beiderbecke Affair for cast)
Jill: How many records do you have in your collection?
Trevor: No idea. Never counted. Maybe a thousand. Or two thousand. Plus a few tapes. [Takes some out to show her]
Jill: Thank you, I know what a tape looks like.
Trevor: Well, there’s a few tapes.
Jill: How many?
Trevor: No idea. Never counted. Maybe —
Best of all the pleasures on offer is the music, jazz themes that stay in your head long after you’ve watched, lingering like some Sondheim theme, and within the programs cheering, providing the beats, the pace, the meaning, part of the content of each episode (sometimes quite explicitly)
Friends and readers,
I was going to begin this fervent recommendation to stop all you are doing and obtain the three seasons of what we may call The Beiderbecke Trilogy, closely associated (for once) with the name of its wonderful script-writer, Alan Plater, with a paradoxical apology, admitting that the films are almost impossible to get and the books difficult too. Except tonight I have discovered they aren’t — as long as you have a working DVD player — or access to one. The books too are available at reasonable prices (showing just the Trilogy), if you don’t mind used paperbacks from Bookfinder.com
Little Norm (Danny Schiller), Jill and Big Al (Terence Rigby) — waiting to be interrogated by the police
I’ve been for the last month or more watching these seasons on and off, sometimes two episodes a night, sometimes one, together with a couple of hour-long documentary features about Plater: on The Beiderbecke Tapes DVD is Images of Yorkshire, all about Plater’s career writing for Yorkshire TV, with the man himself interviewed — and very interesting he was; on Fortunes of War, the 3 DVD set (Region 2), TimeShifts, a posthumous moving life-and-works beginning with his first play and carrying on to his last programs and books, emphasizing what he brought originally to TV: the real language of everyday England from all classes used by characters, and music integrated and used so that we remember the tunes and they stand for themes, ideas, characters distinctly. I wrote about Plater earlier this season (Hearing the Music) so will not repeat his biography nor signal accomplishments nor filmography (as it’s called). This is “just” to recommend Beiderbecke.
And it’s not easy to do unless you’ve seen the series or at least read the books. William Gallagher, a TV historian, journalist, critic, and dramatist in his own right captures the tones and tells the story of how the programs first emerged, the several process through which they were made, synopses of episodes, complete with representative witty dialogue, and assessments. Retelling the stories (see also Tapes and Connection), and saying they are gentle parodies of mystery/spy/thrillers. Gallagher says they combine prosaic quiet realisms with “the absurd,” but the better word is wacky — what literally happens is slightly and more wacky, versions of daily life turned askew so the underlying silly sudden contingent desperation of some of our behaviors lies open to view. This though sounds too stark (even if here and there the action skirts real danger, risk, threat) for the controlling mode is droll and the pace utterly leisured. This may be seen visually in the way repeated we see the two people get into the yellow van (old, battered, with signs from Jill’s campaigns) and go back and forth to their jobs or wherever they are going. No show today would waste such time with what’s “not needed.”
But we are perpetually in our cars too, with the sun in our eyes, we talk there to one another
It becomes a motif, a sort of symbol for the series
People also say (rightly) that for quite a while after the program is over you hear the strong jazz music (played by a band, with Frank Riccotti the composer). Remembering it you have in your head a kind of rhythm (this is what Sondheim achieves too in his best songs and musicals), the lingering effect.
No one ever hurries, there is no pile up of action, and no ratcheting up of tension, a kind of cumulative effect is felt but not so we really become anxious or stressed about anything. Part of this is the benignity, sanity, low expectations, & ironic distanced temperature of our central lovers (the term feels overdone), Trevor and Jill. When the building Trevor is living in to make way for a road (gov’t is not looked upon as having any common sense) is knocked down, Jill invites him to come live with her in a much less phony-looking house where she is first found (her aspiring ex-husband’s taste) as “probationary cohab.” They do love companionably, sentimentally, in friendship and duress, but they don’t romance. They approach love-making by first defining what are erogenous zones, then discussing further, and then the covers are pulled up or the light goes out. Two of the series (Tapes and Connection) end with our two high on a Yorkshire hill overlooking the dales, with the second by their side a cot for First-Born (their baby to whom they have not as yet given a name by the time the the third season ended
Feel the fresh breezes
With their first baby (first-born implies there may be more), to whom we hear Trevor tells tender stories to
Much is happening all the time, but it does not always lead to high melodramatic action (in fact there is little melodrama in the serials and when it does occur, say in Beiderbecke Tapes, you realize the series is straining); characters are thinking, deciding, doing things they need to do, becoming, helping one another or following some direction that is part of the story and itself issues in denouements that teach us or them something or other; we are learning a lot. Especially important are the many throw-away lines; typically the brilliant sudden intrusions of this or that ironical comment is spoken in a quick understated way. Why did the police arrest you? Trevor asks Jill. “I was intercepted with sealed envelopes from the Kremlin” is her quick quiet response. What else did you expect? Answers that go nowhere and are themselves filled with questions are what Jill and Trevor typically tell Mr Carter, their sceptical colleague, or the earnest imbecilic headmaster, Mr Wheeler (Keith Smith).
In one interview Plater says when he conceives a character, he or the character asks three questions which the action pursues: “who am I? How did I get here? What am I going to do tomorrow?”
They are supported by an inimitable cast, some of actors semi-famous, and others (to me) unknown (and perhaps never became BBC regulars). These are mostly variants in comedy, but when pushed move into semi-neurotic memories of unjust treatment. Terence Rigby as Al was told he was redundant so he set up a warehouse of goods in the basement of a church and sells them by having his “sister,” Janey (archetypical beautiful platinum blonde) go round neighborhoods with a thick catalogue. He was a major character actor at the time; not so Janey (Sue Jenkins) or Yvonne, the baby-sitter (Judy Brooke) who confesses a nagging deprivation leads her to steal:
Judy Brooke as Yvonne Fairweather.
I was delighted to re-find Maggie Jones as the pub-owner’s wife, Bella Atkinson (she was in the 1971 Sense and Sensibility, Mrs Quiverful in the 1982 Barchester Chronicles), Beryl Reid as Sylvia Jill’s old friend, companion in radical women’s circles (doubtless named for Sylvia Pankhurst, who was “consistent” we are told), now living in what seemed to be assisted living for disabled people and Jill’s confident and occasional advisor.
Jill with Sylvia who says she cannot understand why people think the old want to sit near ducks in ponds …
I recognized Eamon Boland as Jill’s errant and now petty criminal of an ex-husband when he appeared
Editorial use only
Eamon Boland as Peter Swinburne
The attentive reader will have realize the POV of this series is pro-labor, egalitarian, compassionate – – one of its pleasures for me — as all Plater’s original work and some of his choices (J. B. Priestley’s Good Companions) reveals. This goes along with having central low status characters (whose actors are not name people) make wry comments and play major roles: in the Beiderbecke Affair, it is “the [nameless] man with a dog called Jason” (Keith Marsh) who remarks there are no neighborhoods, no neighbors any more, who snitches to the police for money; the Chief Superintendent Forrest (a star elsewhere, Colin Blakely) an ultimate crook; and a very funny over-enthusiastic (half-mad) Sgt Hobson (Dominic Jepcott) trying so hard (he gets a Ph.D, but cannot think outside his script
Dominic Jephcott as DS Hudson and Terence Rigby as Big Al — the Sergeant scrambling about over rocks is described by “the man with the dog called Jason” as “having a bit of a crawl” as he watches him
I also so enjoyed all the shots of Yorkshire: not just the countryside, but typical and real streets, compounds of houses — I lived there for over 2 years, and was very happy with Jim — euphoric in the first months of our marriage.
In one of the semi-wacky sequences Jill and Trevor deliver a man who seems to be a Polish refugee to the Lancashire border because they cannot get him to the Mexican one — you can see here the casual continual photographing of Northern England
I did assume the books must be inferior; they were written after the series aired but are not simply novelizations. The stories differ somewhat; there is a real attempt to use the narrator, to have appealing effective description, pace, subjectivity, but what really makes them an equivalent reminder, substitute let’s say on a train, or bus, is Plater has recreated the tone of the series — the same wry undercutting wit, ironies, crisp dialogue whose words surprise you — there is poetry in Plater’s language. My copy is a many times read book.
So far from having to apologize for recommending something the reader will not be able to access, I’ve discovered the cult that arose at the time (over five years, for there were breaks in the seasons — not all the people high in the BBC believed in this program’s ability to attract viewers), is not gone altogether. The show is remembered and people are still buying and watching it. Barbara Flynn is not the only one of the actors and other professionals involved who remembers the experience with real fondness and pride. She supplied most of the photos in Gallagher’s book
This seem to be an ad for Britbox (a subscription site on the Internet where you might be able to see the serial): they have chosen to show hero and heroine in Amsterdam (Beiderbecke Tapes goes to Amsterdam and Edinburgh)
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
A friend reminds me: “In Beidebecke Trevor wants to call First Born “Edward Kennedy” after Duke ‘Edward Kennedy’ Ellington, and Jill wants to call him “Karl” after Karl Marx.” Also the important message from Beiderbecke is summed up in the last lines of the B Connection – “Ssh – you’ve got to hear the music [of life]”.
To and from a friend:
In Gallagher’s book he explains that not all the actors were available for the second season — it seems each time there were people at the BBC who did not believe in the project and wanted to cancel it because each time it was _not_ renewed and sometimes it was more than a year between renewals. I think you do need to have an intellectual sense of humor and be alive to subtle radical jokes of various kinds. And though so many have admired it, it seems it is not widely remembered the way say something called Dad’s Army is.
Plater wrote another story in brief, a nugget for another series — it’s reprinted in Gallagher, but it was finally no go — for the reasons of subversion we’ve stated, some higher up in the BBC did not favor this program. They never attacked TV itself — few dare — Altman in his cinema movies maybe. Had there been a fourth season they would have had to give First-Born a name.
Ellen
My friend: In a way it is “subversive” – people doing the best they can, and highlights a difference between southern Brits (South East corner – London and hinterland) who see themselves as the rulers of UK (and as a result don’t approve of the ‘informality’ of the actions of the characters depicted), and northern Brits, who are still downtrodden by the southerners; the enemy here is internal – the system, controlled by Southern Brits. Dad’s Army speaks to the pseudo race memory of Brits – ‘plucky Britain standing up against Nazi terrorism’ – the enemy is external.
5/17/2021:
I don’t have the screenplays but the novels that Plater wrote after each season are very close to the series in some fundamental ways. I am understanding more than I did — I even have trouble understanding mysteries in simple parodies like these, and one thing I am struck with — showing a radical thought genuinely in the series, or protest — that I don’t to be honest see in Miss Scarlett except the idea a woman has the right to earn a living and be a professional of whatever sort. I agree that’s fundamental and important but everything around it shows the characters endlessly compromising with all other values.
In Beiderbecke one of the two close associates of our lovers says he began his profession of selling goods off a catalogue after he was made “redundant” He explains his redundancy in ways that resonate against the larger culture — including Parliament’s laws about trade. What he is probably doing is sluicing off goods where he can (sometimes illegally so stealing) and making them available by pretending they are in the catalogue. You get a different brand than the one in the catalogue. The way building are built (soulless), torn down to make way for a highway no one needs or wants in the area; Jill’s attempt to run as a conservation candidate — the lovers unconventional inner life together …. The continual subtext of this series.
NB: there is some dispute whether Plater wrote The Beiderbecke Tapes and The Beiderbecke Connection before the production of the second and third season. Some say he wrote the latter two first; Gallagher seems to suggest they all came out (again) afterwards: I assume there was some post-airing editing.
Some comments as notes:
Get Lost! I’ve watched the first of the four episodes. It is very interesting: it is a precursor to Biederbecke. I like Biederbecke better because it’s more good-natured, there is something kindly in the comic tones of everyone that is lacking in this dry run; OTOH, it has its own harder qualities but is yet not violent, pro-social with some of the same values. I’d like to put down the difference to the two main actors, especially Barbara Flynn, but the novels have this benignity and drollness — Get Lost! (as you see from the title) is not droll; there is even something threatening or sinister in the husband’s disappearance and this yellow VW is somehow quietly menacing.
I’ve watched the second episode of Get Lost! another difference is the criminals are really pro-actively violent. In the episode the opponent tries to kill Nevillle (Alun Armstrong, the early version of Trev), after him fiercely with a knife. It’s not droll. It moves too fast — the action thriller is somehow too much there. I agree the charm of Trev and Jill is they do accept their lot; they are not strivingly ambitious. Neville does accept his lot, but Judy (Bridget Turner, early version of Jill) is discontented, uneasy). One satiric piece went on for too long: he visits a literary society and it’s a mock of academic jargon but I doubt anyone but an academic would laugh – even then it goes on for too long. Maybe Plater and the BBC people were having themselves most of them experienced “high culture” stuff thought it hilarious — two of the characters are named after Leonard and Virginia Woolf (Mr and Mrs Moffatt), it’s a debunking of DH Lawrence who once upon a time was ludicrously talked of in reverential terms. They also make fun of the idea that people quickly have rich discussions in classrooms.
And Episode 3 of Get Lost! Before Beiderbecke, there was a 4 part serial called Get Lost! which anticipates many aspects of Beiderbecke: the same kind couple at the center; also teachers in out Leeds, a high school. Similar kinds of not-so-gentle irony about society. The title is unfortunate and is shows that the programs are not hitting a secure note or tone the way Beiderbecke did, but the 3rd episode began to be very good. They started to hit a curiously comic note: the sinister man turned out to be an ex-student with a half-mad version of a socialist agenda — a real note of comedy came in but not droll — more sly. I find it hard to think of words to capture the feel. At its end our hero and heroine go to bed together so that’s part of this new tone. She does not want her husband back, and the other disappeared people do not want to come back. So the mysteries are about people who have had it with what is their life today and have disappeared with the help of an organization they pay to help them. It’s this organization which has tried to stop our hero and heroine from finding her “lost husband.” These disappearing people are trying to invent a new more fulfilling existence — but not one that has to do with making more money or ambition in a worldly sense. The joke in the title is therefore too abrupt: the idea is, are you discontented, well try to get lost …. It does not quite work. As I re-watch all these seasons I can see why they would not be brought over to the US — supposedly the US audience would want something more upbeat even when subversive …
To someone else who responded to this blog and has seen the Biederbecke series and even read or read about the novels: I agree that in the Biedebecke series “the main characters are “doing the best they can; they aren’t violent, over-grasping. Indeed, the whole setup(s) are concerned with doing the minimum to get back to normal.”
Normal is not making people redundant, not surveying them (little Norm says democracy is the right to be left alone, and big Al sniffs and insinuates that’s not what the state thinks). In the first episode that the “crimes” that Jill and Trev uncover are the outward greed manifestations of a man on the council, a very rich businessman (McAllister whose daughter tries to take, bribe Trev away from Jill, whose father threatens Trev if he returns to Jill) and the top police officer (Forester, played by Colin Blakeley) who protects them. They are cheating the community by their unfair business practices, and when they break a law, the top officer protects them. Our characters, especially Al and Norm, stand for powerless ordinary people forced to break small ordinances in order to make a precarious living. The comic academic policeman goes after little people and tries to invent crime where there is none. A man who is in room 5005 and oversees the records of things is in cohoots (someone keeps changing the number on his door so it’s very hard to find him); he stalls and tries not to give out records. But they are there, and Al apparently has documents that can be used in court . Al and Norm could be put in jail and were it not a comedy, would probably be put out of business — and left to survive on the dole or menial jobs. Instead some justice is done — or so we are led to believe but we never hear that the bad people are put in jail or punished for sure. The head of the police is gone and the comic incompetent Ph.d earning policeman is put at the head of police.
So a serious critique of the gov’t and the society of Leeds is embedded quietly in this series.
Yes Beiderbecke Tapes is weak w/o the whole cast, especially Al and Norm (also some of the others, Janey, the platinum blonde, the man with the dog Jason and his wry comments) but once it gets going it has its own qualities — it is more about death and aging — with the comic gravedigger — which is somehow appropriate to nuclear waste dumping. Jill’s friend is an aging woman who lives in a home. I have not watched it enough as yet. The travel parts are interesting — instead of filming Leeds they film Edinburgh and Amsterdam (just a bit, not much).
Reading the novelisation of the second season of Biederbecke called Biederbecke Tapes — whether written before or after since there was a gap before season 2 and then two of the original actors could not join in — a loss. Unexpectedly the novel is better than the first novel and much better than the second season. It is funnier; Plater knows better what he is after, what he means for real to make fun of – -and in his stride. The thing is it doesn’t matter what actors play the parts in the series. This is the first time I’ve experienced this sort of thing ….
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