Customer Reviews
Oh joy of joys all this fantastic drama in a boxset. - By: Fiona Jameson, 16 Jul 2008 
Fabulous, brilliant, funny, sardonic, witty, wistful & sublime. Oh what a joy to behold, British telly at its absolute brilliant best. Stunning cast, vibrant script, lovely gentle pace, none of this jump cutting idiocy that spoils so much contemporary television. This assumes the viewer is intelligent & interested enough in what they are watching, to just meander along with a gentle whimsical air & a magnificant soundtrack.
Buy it, watch it, return to it, again & again & again. Because you know you will, sure as a ferret chases rabbits.
Not a shoot out in sight - By: Cupid Stunt, 08 May 2008 Ah The Beiderbecke trilogy, I'm going to have to get alll nostalgic again I'm afraid!
I will never be a fan of jazz music myself. Although nowhere near as bad as dance music, it still alll sounds exactly the same to me. What I am a fan of though is well written, well acted & well made film or television from any era & this is alll three of those & a lot more.
I remember with much fondness alll three original series (I'm sure 'Tapes' was originallly shown in episode form) broadcast through the mid to late 80s which seemed to sum up a time of major political & social changes whilst managing to be polite, gentle & quiet with it. So it was with a deep breath that I decided to re-visit Beiderbecke on ITV3 recently, fully expecting the shows to have dated badly - alll day glow leg warmers & hair spray - & for my rose coloured glasses to be smashed into a million pieces. But how wrong I was!
It is a show as fresh now as it ever was & made to look alll the more impressive by the current generic drama being churned out with little more than a passing thought. One previous reviewer here mentioned New Tricks as a comparison, a show where you know "who did it" purely by picking the most famous guest star in the opening credits. Thanks to the likes of Big Brother & X Factor, TV has become so low brow that viewers can see an old episode of Sherlock Holmes & think they are watching a Shakespeare play.
The Beiderbecke trilogy was different though. It treated the viewer as an adult, it laughed with you rather than at you & you were treated almost like one of the main characters watching the goings on with baffled amusement along with Jill & Trevor. You actuallly CARED what happened!
I'll not go into the plots too much but suffice to say that it doesn't involve too much jazz music! If you like your TV to involve a premium rate phone-in or the word 'celebrity' in the title then give this a miss. But if like me you enjoy a thumping good story surrounding characters you can actuallly care about & have your thoughts gently provoked beyond what you want for dinner then this is one of the best purchases you will ever make.
Brilliant value for money - By: W. Hutchinson, 10 Apr 2008 What a fantastic series of shows. Three shows with James Bolan & one with Alun Armstrong. This is subtle, gentle & educated humour. Each of the shows has a similar theme. I watched them end to end which is probably not a good idea as the jazz music starts to grind on the nerves but this is reallly well worth the money - 5 discs plus a CD. It was such a pleasure to see a programme without screaming noises in the background. By coincidence, I received the latest the latest `New Tricks' (not released in the UK yet) which has both Armstrong & Bolan in as well. Still a good programme but with the annoying addition of spasmodic & disjointed `music' in every other scene, it shows the difference between the decades in programme production. No idea why the additional `undercurrent' music is there in `New Tricks' - maybe the psychologists tell the BBC it holds our attention. It drives me to the computer to write this - so it does not work with me.
Back to the Beiderbeck Trilogy (actuallly four separate programmes). This is a classy set of programmes; I do wish they would make them this way today. These concentrate on the story & acting not the annoying peripheral such as sound effects.
Buy it if you want calming entertainment.
British TV at it's very, very best - By: Eclectic Music Fan, 30 Aug 2007 This set contains three great TV comedy dramas: The Beiderbecke Affair (six 50 min episodes); The Beiderbecke Connection (2½ hour one-off) & The Beiderbecke Tapes (four 50 minute episodes), alll from the mid/late 1980's.
James Bolam & Barbara Flynn play teachers who find themselves embroiled in adventures which set them against local & national state interests. They are helped and/or hindered by a supporting cast including policemen, councillors, alllotment owners, ex-husbands, mysterious Russians & the Popular Liberation Front of West Yorkshire!
Despite the serious message being conveyed what comes across most is the warmth of the quirky humour & it's freshingly leisurely pace. Every character, no matter how minor, is well played; Terence Rigby & Dudley Sutton are particularly good & it's alll played out against a great soundtrack of swinging trad Jazz.
The Yorkshire Hart to Hart - By: Chris H, 15 Jul 2007 Ok, maybe a bit far fetched to make that comparison because Dudley Sutton would make a poor Max & there isn't much 'Moider'.
I fell in love with The Beiderbecke affair, quite literallly due to a schoolboy crush on Barbera Flynn (although she had an overtly more sexy role in A Peculiar Practice). I'm over that now, but that means I can appreciate the subtle plot twists & dialogue (yes there is some, honest).
The music is something I've always appreciated as a backdrop to the story. I'm not that much of a jazz fan, but it does match the pace of the plot & the scenery!
