Why This Is Hell

( Ironic aside )

I've just watched a tv comedy drama which features a mystery unfolding in Leeds, and centres on the relationship between a jazz-loving woodwork teacher and a rather more middle class English teacher. They are pursued in this by a policeman as suspicious of them as he is of the villains.

And I'm partway through a drama about a gay man and his best friend who is irrestible to any gay man. The best friend picks up a seventeen year old on the night that he becomes a father by artificial insemination.

Okay, the latter is Queer As Folk, and I've finally found a cheap copy of the American version of Russell T Davies's seminal series. (Decent writer. Wonder if he's done anything since?) So far, we're more or less following the British version - the names aren't Stuart, Vince and Nathan but the roles are there (the advertising job, the supermarket job, the black female companion), and in the first episode at least the director (Russell Mulcahy) or his editor have sat down and looked very closely at the original. It's not quite Gus Van Sant does Psycho, but uncanny enough. The changes stick out. In the original, Vince stands on a roof, embraced from behind by Stuart, and says, "Why am I always Kate Winslet?", here Mikey says "Why am I always Lois Lane?" It'll be fascinating to see how and where it diverges from the orioginal - episode eight to ten, presumably - but already one character killed off in the original is allowed to survive.

But the former is not The Beiderbecke Affair, rather an earlier tv serial by Alan Plater, Get Lost. The English teacher, Judy Threadgold (Bridget Turner), has lost her husband, and goes to Neville Keaton (Alun Armstrong) for help. Before they know it, they've fallen into a conspiracy. At first they don't go to the police because, as Alfred Hitchcock allegedly said, the police are boring. Jill Swinburne (Barbara Flynn) was to use the same line to Trevor Chaplin (James Bolam). Keaton-Chaplin. H'mm.

Whereas BA begins with the two teachers in a sort of relationship, Get Lost! is clearly at an earlier stage of getting to know each other; Threadgold seems to find Keaton tiresome, and it is a much colder performance than Flynn's. She lacks the twinkle in the eye. Armstrong is a fine actor, but he doesn't seem to hit the beat in the same way that Bolam does - the latter is trained in twenty-five years of sitcoms by the mid-1980s.

Apparently the series was successful enough to merit the conideration of a sequel - although to me it's not quite on the boil although there are nice touches. Apparently Armstrong was busy doing Nicholas Nickleby for the RSC - so it metamorphosed into BA. For this relief, much thanks.

Meanwhile Dudley Sutton, who played another teacher in BA, is showing up in sixties British films being shown on BBC2 (The Leather Boys and The Boys).

Of course, I'm tempted to watch the whole trilogy again, but maybe I should have other priorities.