The Beiderbecke Affair has a similar style to Get Lost!, wherein Neville Keaton (Alun Armstrong) and Judy Threadgold (Bridget Turner) played in an ensemble cast.

Rather than following a usual linear story structure, The Beiderbecke Affair – set in Leeds in 1985 – is a character-led drama with a plot that initially appears rather unclear, moving as it does from one seemingly unrelated event to another.

Jill Swinburne (Barbara Flynn) is interested in neither football nor jazz but teaches English and wants to help save the planet, standing in a local election as "your Conservation candidate".

Trevor tries to buy some jazz records from a "dazzlingly beautiful platinum blonde" who calls at the door raising funds for the local Cubs’ football team.

[2] Thrown into the mix are Sgt Hobson (Dominic Jephcott), a suspicious yet seemingly incompetent graduate police detective, and a pair of local black economy tradesmen, "Big Al" (Terence Rigby) and "Little Norm" (Danny Schiller), who agree to help "average-sized" Jill and Trevor with their school supplies problems.

Unlike subsequent episodes the series ends with this scene and Big Al and Little Norm listening to the radio at their allotment; the viewer hears from this that a local senior police officer has been suspended, and a businessman and a councillor have been arrested.

In 2012, the British Film Institute published a book about the series in its range examining key television shows: The Beiderbecke Affair by William Gallagher.