Oliver's Travels
April 2005 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

I saw Alan Bates on stage in London in 1971 in the lead role in Butley. He was playing a witty but mean young professor whose love life was falling apart. Bates described his character in an interview: "[Butley] abuses everyone around him, insults them, tries to ruin everything for them and doesn't succeed…. He loses and they don't." Bates was 38. At 61, almost a quarter century later, Alan Bates plays another witty professor, but an older, nicer one, in Oliver’s Travels, a BBC Mystery! Miniseries now on DVD. Instead of destroying those around him, Oliver is generous and forbearing. He gets pastured by the college administration, but his love life takes off instead. These two roles frame Bates’ career, from angry young man on the London stage to beloved eminence of stage and screen. Alan Bates died of pancreatic cancer on December 27, 2003.

This clever series is the rambling tale of how a "redundant" professor of comparative religion, also a jazz aficionado and crossword fan, finds love and adventure. He sets out on a pilgrimage through the scenic Scottish countryside to meet his favorite setter of crossword puzzles, the pseudonymous "Aristotle." Along the way, he stumbles onto an unsolved murder and the lovely policewoman who wants to solve it. Playing Officer Diane Priest, Sinéad Cusack is almost 15 years Bates’ junior, yet they team up credibly as a couple. From their meeting on, the plot is a balance of romance and mystery. The mystery is supplied by Bill Paterson, a mainstay of British television drama. He plays Baxter, a dignified sleuth who enigmatically hounds the couple on their trek across Scotland.

The musical score puzzles fans of the series. They hear as themes a Bach concerto, a Scottish folk song, and Dave Brubeck’s "Take Five." In the role of Baxter, Bill Paterson, who in real life trained as a concert pianist, plays Beethoven’s Apassionata himself at the piano of a jazz-loving Baron (Miles Anderson). Yet the only music credit is to the main composer, American Carl Davis.

The DVD itself is unembellished. The five episodes are on two discs. The transfer is not particularly crisp nor are the colors, although the Scottish countryside can’t help looking lush. No remastering is in evidence. Although there are no problems hearing dialogue, the audio is adequate at most. There are no extras except cast filmographies.

To those who loved the series, these limitations won’t matter. Its tired look may even add to its charm. The brainy script by Alan Plater is pure BBC, full of eccentric bit characters, clever wordplay, offhand references to UK history, class issues, and pop culture. Think of a Murder, She Wrote made for Brits. Plater intended the part for someone else, but fortunately the BBC insisted on Bates. When Bates played Butley on stage 20-plus years earlier, it was hard work, he said, even harder than doing Hamlet. "I shed pounds every night from the sheer hard slog of it all." But he seemed to be breezing his way through Oliver’s Travels. R.I.P., Alan Bates.

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