The Beiderbecke Tapes - Plot

Plot

Trevor Chaplin teaches woodwork and likes to listen to jazz. Jill Swinburne teaches English and wants to help save the planet. They live together and just want a quiet life. Then they meet John the barman who died but is much better now. John gave them a tape, which led to meeting Dave the wimp. They find out about The Peoples Front For The Liberation of West Yorkshire. The man with no name called Mr Peterson came to see them. He was followed by the six men in grey suits. Jill goes to see The Oldest Suffragette In Town. Trevor and Jill go on a trip to Amsterdam with their class from "San Quentin High". Trevor and Jill meet The Honourable Order of Elks who are "looking for a bit of action".

The tone throughout is deliberately discursive and undramatic. Trevor and Jill are mistakenly given a secret tape recording, which results in their harassment by security forces, their home being invaded, their private lives used to discredit them at school and their being pursued all the way to Amsterdam and Edinburgh. Eventually the tapes are revealed as just a MacGuffin, a charade invented by shady government forces as a part of a disinformation campaign.

The whole Beiderbecke series works as a kind of down-to-earth update of Hollywood's 1930s Thin Man series, with its two bantering protagonists exchanging barbs not among the high society of Manhattan and San Francisco, but at a run-down secondary school in Leeds. The Beiderbecke Tapes, like the second Nick and Nora Charles adventure After the Thin Man (US, 1936), concludes with the announcement that the couple are to have a baby.

In the same style as the preceding The Beiderbecke Affair, the plot isn't as important as the banter and interplay between the characters. The adventure unfolds to a soundtrack of jazz music in the style of Bix Beiderbecke performed by Frank Ricotti with Kenny Baker as featured cornet soloist.