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Category:    Home > Reviews > Comedy > Drama > Mystery > The Beiderbecke Affair (British Mini-Series)

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


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