Special Notes:

The Fifteen Streets (1989) was the first Catherine Cookson teleplay adaptation scored by Colin Towns, and up until the year 2000, another production followed almost each year, with Towns scoring his fair share in the series, along with composers such as Richard Hartley, Carl Davis, Dominic Muldowney, and Alan Parker making their own contributions.

Volume 1 collects meaty suites from three teleplays, and although each is ostensibly a period romance, the music goes much deeper than thematic variations exclusively addressing the vicissitudes of a couple, a love triangle, or whatever emotional goo was central to a story.

Perhaps the series' strongest assets are the period detail and use of full orchestras, giving the composers far more wiggle room for diverse themes, source cues, and period detail – something North American productions generally lack. (The U.S. equivalents during the nineties were often more contemporary, and drew from writings by Danielle Steele or Jackie Collins;in Canada, the goo fodder came under the Harlequin banner, with even lower budgetary ceilings.)

The two scores by Colin Towns' that bookend this collection are quite distinct, but they certainly show off the composer's versatility in writing rich thematic material that doesn't scream romantic mush.

The first teleplay, Tilly Trotter (1999), is the most enjoyable of the trio because it offers the best variety of shifting moods, and some lovely source cues. “Northumberland 1838” contains some delicate melodic sections, with some beautiful use of woodwinds and solo piano that nail a bygone period without quoting a specific (and clichéd) style.

“Mr. Sopwith of Highfield” is indicative of the various mood changes, and Towns colours the character portraits with soothing passages from oboe, flutes, piano, and harp. “The Wedding Dance” is a short little fiddle jig for chamber orchestra, whereas “Magrath's Hiding Place ” offers a more dramatic development from tense and hurried strings to a soft pastoral. The closing cue recaps the main theme, with some initially darker shading, but closes on a gentle waltz, with piano, flute, and harp ending the story like a fairy tale.

Towns' The Secret (2000) is much darker, with the intro cue wafting between lyrical statements from individual woodwinds, and some portentous use of faintly rumbling percussion at the beginning. “Marry Him, If That's What You Want” offers some introspective pauses, with solo piano nicely evoking a mercurial mix of hesitation, fear, and secret yearnings (oh my).

“Everything Was So Perfect” is a more detailed and expanded rendition of the suite's opening bars, with rumbling percussion, trilling flutes, cyclical piano hits, and a rising tide of orchestral might that Towns elasticizes by repeating certain mood motifs, including a low brass rumble that resembles a pall of doom.

It's all delivered in a compact form with a quick shift to more brighter and optimistic harmonics, but unlike the melodic variety of Tilly, the Secret suite deals with light and shadow, and Towns' skill in crafting dark horror and thriller scores comes in handy when he delves into areas of character suspicions and danger.

Alan Parker's score for Colour Blind (1998) is semi-tragic in capturing a mélange of fears; the opening cue is wrenched with anguish and desperation, and Parker emphasizes folk instruments in his choice of orchestral colours; his theme fragments are oft-repeated, but they reinforce the atmosphere of the locales, and sometimes infer a sense of urgency.

“Hassan's Home Town ” is edited from separate cues, but they form a compact emotional narrative as Parker restrains his orchestra in favour of fiddles, harps, and guitar. There's far more thematic restatements (some a bit too similar) in the Parker suite, but like the Towns scores, it's surprising that the composers chose to avoid the use of voguish and more cost-effective synths and electronics in favour of formal orchestral and folk instruments.

The album's emphasis is on the romantic lives of Cookspn's major female characters, but this debut volume in what's hopefully an ongoing series is worth a peak, particularly since it continues the tradition of beautifully crafted music for British television.

© 2008 Mark R. Hasan