The Beiderbecke Affair (British Mini-Series)
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: B-
One of three Mini-Series, The Beiderbecke Affair
(1983) crosses Comedy and a send-up of Drama with Mystery as a secondary
concern. That makes any investigation
here like one big MacGuffin, what Hitchcock describes as the thing everyone in
the story is after but the audience could care less about. That means the burden on the writing has to
be on the characters being entertaining and their situations equally so. As there has been a trilogy of these shows,
you could say they have been effective at the latter.
Of course, you might not like the leads at all, which then
would kill you being entertained by the show, but this is not bad and neither
are they. James Bolam is Trevor
Chaplin, a woodshop teacher and likes Jazz music, while he dates Jill (Barbara
Flynn), who wants to win a political seat and push her environmental
agenda. They are an interesting pair
and they seem to attract quirkiness everywhere they turn, if not outright the
world of The Avengers. The
episodes featured are:
1) What I
Don’t Understand Is This…
2) Can
Anyone Join In?
3) We Call
It The White Economy
4) Um… I
Know What You’re Thinking
5) That Was
A Very Funny Evening
6) We Are
On The Brink Of A New Era, If Only…
The trouble here begins when Trevor orders some vinyl Jazz
records, only not to get them, to have the woman he ordered them from disappear
and all this lead to police interference, government involvement and possible
murder. This puts the show enough into
the realm of the deconstructive detective cycle, but it is still primarily
comic, if not an outright slapstick piece.
Politics are an amusing sideline and this is very well cast and acted. I just found the Mystery side weaker than it
needed to be, sacrificed for the other aspects the show was working to pull
off. We’ll have to see if the other
productions are similar or not when we get to them.
The full frame 1.33 x 1 image quality is a bit soft and
average, lacking detail and being more color poor than it should be or was shot
to be. It is a good-looking show
otherwise. The Dolby Digital 5.1
spreads around the dated original monophonic sound well, but cannot hide its
age, with the Dolby 2.0 not playing back as well. The only extra are a few stills, which is very minute. The Beiderbecke Affair is an off-beat
enough show that it is better than most of the pale shows like it that
followed, but you will have to see it for yourself to see if you really like
it.
- Nicholas Sheffo
