Production
Writing
Using characters inspired by Nick and Nora Charles, the detectives in the film The Thin Man (1934) and its sequels, Plater sought to juxtapose the conventions of the hardboiled thriller, as expounded by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, with the mundanity of life in Yorkshire. The plot was inspired by a newspaper article that reported that 20,000 people went missing in the UK each year.
In creating his two protagonists – Neville Keaton and Judy Threadgold (named after Sunderland goalkeeper Harry Threadgold) – Plater hit upon the idea of making them schoolteachers, saying, "I tried to think of the least likely place to find two detectives and I came up with a staffroom of a comprehensive school in Leeds". Plater apportioned elements of his own interests to his two heroes, making Judy an environmental campaigner and Neville a football and jazz fan. Neville's love of jazz is reflected in the serial's soundtrack which features re-recordings, by Frank Ricotti and featuring Kenny Baker, of tracks by the likes of Duke Ellington.
Filming locations
The series was mainly filmed around the Leeds area. Settings included:
- The pub in "Worried about Jim" – The Garden Gate in Hunslet.
- The Literary Society meeting place – Town Hall, Yeadon.
- Tong School, Westgate Hill, Bradford
Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke was an American jazz cornetist, pianist and composer.
Peter William Sutcliffe, also known as Peter Coonan, was an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980. He was dubbed in press reports as the Yorkshire Ripper, an allusion to the Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper. He was sentenced to twenty concurrent sentences of life imprisonment, which were converted to a whole life order in 2010. Two of Sutcliffe's murders took place in Manchester; all the others were in West Yorkshire. Criminal psychologist David Holmes characterised Sutcliffe as being an "extremely callous, sexually sadistic serial killer."
Alan Frederick Plater was an English playwright and screenwriter, who worked extensively in British television from the 1960s to the 2000s.
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 and Judy Threadgold 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).
The Beiderbecke Tapes is a two-part British television drama serial written by Alan Plater and broadcast in 1987. It is the second serial in The Beiderbecke Trilogy and stars James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as schoolteachers Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne. When a tape recording of a conversation about nuclear waste inadvertently falls into Trevor's hands, Trevor and Jill find themselves being pursued by national security agents.
The Beiderbecke Connection is a four-part British television serial written by Alan Plater and broadcast in 1988. It is the third and final part of The Beiderbecke Trilogy and stars James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as schoolteachers Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne. Now with a baby in tow, Jill and Trevor are asked by Big Al to look after a refugee called "Ivan".
Pemberley is the fictional country estate owned by Fitzwilliam Darcy, the male protagonist in Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice. It is located near the fictional town of Lambton, and believed by some to be based on Lyme Park, south of Disley in Cheshire.
"The Man with the Twisted Lip", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the sixth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine in December 1891. Doyle ranked "The Man with the Twisted Lip" sixteenth in a list of his nineteen favourite Sherlock Holmes stories.
Alan Armstrong, known professionally as Alun Armstrong, is an English character actor. He grew up in County Durham in North East England, and first became interested in acting through Shakespeare productions at his grammar school. Since his career began in the early 1970s, he has played, in his words, "the full spectrum of characters from the grotesque to musicals... I always play very colourful characters, often a bit crazy, despotic, psychotic".
Judy Catherine Claire Parfitt is an English theatre, film, and television actress. She made her film debut in the 1950s, followed by a supporting role in the BBC television serial David Copperfield (1966). She also appeared as Queen Gertrude in Tony Richardson's 1969 film adaptation of Hamlet.
Leeds Playhouse is a theatre in the city centre of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1990 in the Quarry Hill area of the city as the West Yorkshire Playhouse, successor to the original Leeds Playhouse, and was rebranded in June 2018 to revert to the title "Leeds Playhouse". It has two auditoria and a studio space, hosts a wide range of productions, and engages in outreach work in the local community.
Bridget Joanna Turner was an English actress.
The Beiderbecke Trilogy refers to three television serials written by Alan Plater and made by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network in the United Kingdom between 1984 and 1988. Each serial centres on schoolteachers Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne, who work at a rundown comprehensive school in Leeds. Woodwork teacher Trevor enjoys football and jazz music whilst English teacher Jill is a political activist concerned with saving the environment.
Red Riding is a British crime drama limited series written by Tony Grisoni and based on the book series of the same name by David Peace. The series comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four (1999), Nineteen Seventy-Seven (2000), Nineteen Eighty (2001) and Nineteen Eighty-Three (2002), and the first, third, and fourth of these novels became three feature-length television episodes, Red Riding 1974, Red Riding 1980, and Red Riding 1983. They aired in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 beginning on 5 March 2009. The three episodes were released theatrically in the United States between 5 and 11 February 2010, by IFC Films.
Shoulder to Shoulder is a 1974 BBC television serial and book relating the history of the women's suffrage movement, both edited by Midge Mackenzie. The drama series grew out of discussions between Mackenzie and the actress and singer Georgia Brown, who was dissatisfied at the lack of decent roles for women in TV drama. Brown enlisted the producer Verity Lambert in the project she and Mackenzie were devising to dramatise the struggle for women's suffrage, and the three women presented the idea to the BBC, which gave approval for the series. Originally they had hoped to use only female script writers but this proved impracticable. Male writers were used and the three female originators of the project later said they needed to remove from their scripts a number of 'innuendoes, misconceptions and untruths' indicative of what Georgia Brown termed "the male point of view".
Judy Brooke is an English actress born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire on 21 February 1970. She is perhaps best known for her roles in The Beiderbecke Trilogy and Band of Gold. She has also appeared in minor roles in other Yorkshire Television programmes.
Leeds is known for its culture in the fields of art, architecture, music, sport, film and television. As the largest city in Yorkshire, Leeds is a centre of Yorkshire's contemporary culture and is the base for Yorkshire's television and regional newspapers.
This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper is a British television crime drama miniseries, first shown on ITV from 26 January to 2 February 2000. The series is a dramatisation of the real-life investigation into the notorious Yorkshire Ripper murders of the late 1970s, showing the effect that it had on the health and career of Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield who led the enquiry. The series also starred Richard Ridings and James Laurenson as DSI Dick Holland and Chief Constable Ronald Gregory, respectively. Although broadcast over two weeks, two episodes were shown consecutively each week.
Foxwood School was a Comprehensive school in Seacroft, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1956 and closed 40 years later in 1996.
Dark Angel is a British three-part television drama miniseries, based on the adaptation of the book Mary Ann Cotton: Britain's First Female Serial Killer by David Wilson. The series was broadcast on 31 October and 7 November 2016, and starred Joanne Froggatt as protagonist Mary Ann Cotton, widely regarded as Britain's first known female serial killer, who was found guilty of murder in March 1873 for the murder of three of her husbands, allegedly in order to collect on their insurance policies. The series was produced by World Productions and distributed by Endemol Shine.
