Get Lost!

Alan Plater had begun writing for television in the early 1960s and had been a regular writer on the police series Z-Cars (1962–78) and its spin-off series Softly, Softly (1966–69) and Softly, Softly: Taskforce (1969–76). He had also written several plays for the BBC and ITV and created and wrote the sitcom Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt! (1974). Plater's scripts were noted for their strong depiction of the lives of the inhabitants of Northern England. In 1978, Plater was commissioned by David Cunliffe, an executive producer at Yorkshire Television (YTV), to adapt J. B. Priestley's The Good Companions as a thirteen part serial. Plater was only able to stretch the plot to fill nine episodes and so offered to write four episodes of what he called a "non-violent thriller" to make up the balance.

Using characters inspired by Nick and Nora Charles, the detectives in the film The Thin Man (1934) and its sequels, Plater sought to juxtapose the conventions of the hardboiled thriller, as expounded by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, with the mundanity of life in Yorkshire. The plot was inspired by a newspaper article that reported that 20,000 people went missing in the UK each year.

In creating his two protagonists – Neville Keaton and Judy Threadgold (named after Sunderland goalkeeper Harry Threadgold) – Plater hit upon the idea of making them schoolteachers, saying, "I tried to think of the least likely place to find two detectives and I came up with a staffroom of a comprehensive school in Leeds". Plater apportioned elements of his own interests to his two heroes, making Judy an environmental campaigner and Neville a football and jazz fan. Neville's love of jazz is reflected in the serial's soundtrack which features re-recordings, by Frank Ricotti and featuring Kenny Baker, of tracks by the likes of Duke Ellington.

Cast as Neville Keaton was Alun Armstrong who, at the time, had worked with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company and would later go on to enjoy a varied television career with roles in such programmes as Our Friends in the North (1996), This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper (2000) and New Tricks (2003–2013).

Judy Threadgold was played by Bridget Turner, an actress best known for her stage work, especially works by Alan Ayckbourn, and had previously appeared in episodes of Sutherland's Law (1973–76) and Target (1977–78).

The series was mainly filmed around the Leeds area. Settings included:

• The pub in "Worried about Jim" – The Garden Gate in Hunslet.
• The Literary Society meeting place – Town Hall, Yeadon.
• Tong School, Westgate Hill, Bradford