The Beiderbecke Affair (1985 Various)

Written by Alan Plater and based on his own four part 1981 series Get Lost! but adding an important jazz element (disappointingly, it's actually played by Kenny Young). Full of quippy dialogue (sardonic non-sequiturs, a bit like screwball comedies) and wonderfully surreal situations (platinum blonde, being asked to referee, warehouse under church), with the old guy (Keith Marsh) and the dog as a sort of Greek chorus. Plater also likes digging at the urban planners, the police and nosy neighbours.

James Bolam and Barbara Flynn make a wonderfully endearing team - but they're not Nick and Nora.  With Dudley Sutton, Dominic Jephcott (DI with BA), Terence Rigby, Danny Schiller, Sue Jenkins (who Q correctly identified as from Brookside).

Had a good audience in the eighties but seems unlikely anything like this would get made now... On that note:

By 1995, when Plater suggested a fourth Beiderbecke serial, ITV no longer even pretended to uphold the public service ideal. 'I rang Jimmy Bolam and Barabara Flynn and asked if they would be up for another one. They said "Oh yea, great". So we got on to Yorkshire and the people there were also thrilled to bits, having earlier asked for a fourth serial. Yorkshire took the idea to the ITV Network Centre and were told to wait. What ITV market men did was analyse the viewing figures for the first three series and conclude that there would now be no audience for such things. Never mind that we got from eight to ten million as far as I recall. Right up to the end we got great notices and I still get fan letters now.'

'Talk of Drama', Sean Day-Lewis, 1998.

Made for Yorkshire TV and shot in and around Leeds. Pleased to see many locations are still there. Love the way the backgrounds are always populated by activity of some sort.