The Books of My Life: The Beiderbecke Affair

For many contemporary critics and historians of post-World War II British television Alan Plater belongs in the pantheon of television writers along with Dennis Potter, Alan Bennett, Alan Clarke, Andrew Davies, Lynda la Plante, John Clesse and a few others. Plater, who also wrote for film, radio, the book trade, and the stage, began writing for television in the 1960s. He is remembered for writing several plays for both the BBC and ITV,  for writing several episodes of the groundbreaking Z-Cars (BBC, 1962-1978), for his adaptation of Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War (BBC, 1987), for his superb adaptation of Chris Mullin's A Very British Coup (Channel 4, 1988), for writing several episodes of Midsummer Mysteries (ITV, 1997-), and for writing several episodes of the wonderful Lewis (ITV, 2006-2015), one of my favourite TV programmes.

One of Plater's best known and most beloved works for television was his The Beiderbecke Affair (Yorkshire Television/ITV, 1985), a reworking, of sorts, of his ITV serial Get Lost (ITV, 1981). As William Gallagher notes in his solid monograph The Beiderbecke Affair (London: BFI, BFI TV Classics series, 2012), the plot, what there is of it--Plater as Gallagher tells us was more a character man than a plot man--of both Get Lost and The Beiderbecke Affair centres on two schoolteachers, in the case of The Beiderbecke Affair schoolteachers at the aptly named San Quentin High School in Leeds, Trevor Chaplin (James Bollan) and Jill Swinburne (Barbara Flynn) along with several other eccentric characters who find themselves trying to solve two related mysteries, why did Trevor not get the Beiderbecke albums he ordered from a catalogue mail order service raising money for the Cubs and why is someone trying to pull the plug on this community catalogue mail order service?

Gallagher, drawing on script analysis, interviews with Plater, Bollan, director David Reynolds, Yorkshire TV's David Cunliffe and Paul Fox, title sequencer Diana Dunn, and Frank Ricotti, composer of the memorable Bix Beiderbecke like jazz soundtrack--Plater is a devoted lover of jazz-- explores, in workmanlike if unspectacular paint by the topical numbers fashion typical of much of the writing on film and television these days, the history, writing, plot, acting, and mise-en-scene of the The Beiderbecke Affair. For at least some, Gallagher's lack of exploration of the broader sociological contexts of The Beiderbecke Affair likely makes it of limited interest to those academics interested in the broader contexts of television shows and the mass media in general. Additionally,  Gallagher provides only limited exploration of the two sequels to The Beiderbecke Affair, The Beiderbecke Tapes (Yorkshire Television/ITV, 1987) and The Beiderbecke Connection (Yorkshire Television/ITV, 1988). Finally, one can only wonder why the BFI and Palgrave Macmillan decided to put a scene from The Beiderbecke Connection on the cover of a book about The Beiderbecke Affair.

Recommended for those interested in British television. As for the show, The Beiderbecke Affair, which is one of those wonderfully eccentric and whimsical British dramedies with an emphasis on character, is well worth watching.