Jim Parker obit

TV score composer and Betjeman collaborator Jim Parker dies aged 88

Bafta-winner wrote theme music for shows including Ground Force and made albums with poet laureate 

He was not on the list.

The celebrated composer Jim Parker, who won four Baftas during a 60-year music career, has died aged 88 after a long illness, his family have said.

Parker was behind some of television’s most recognisable theme music, including the BBC’s Tom Jones period drama, as well as the intros to Ground Force, Changing Rooms and ITV’s Midsomer Murders, among others.

“He wore his talent lightly and had a quiet passion and great sense of humour,” said his daughter Claire.

“His ambition was, first and foremost, for audiences to enjoy his music. He was both well-respected and well-liked within the music and television industry, writing so many memorable theme tunes, and always giving 100% commitment, which led to collaborations often lasting many years. He will be missed by friends, family and colleagues.”

Parker composed the music for Banana Blush, an album he made in 1974 with the poet John Betjeman.

Betjeman, who had been named poet laureate two years earlier, was initially reluctant and struggled to see the album’s value shortly after its release. But his view on the work improved sufficiently to go on to record three more albums with Parker. He later said: “You know, I don’t like any of my poems, but I think the music did the trick.” And he told Parker he was “entranced … with your brilliant and sympathetic music to my verses”.

Parker, for his part, told Betjeman’s biographer, Bevis Hillier: “On occasions, John would introduce me and say ‘he’s Sullivan, I’m Gilbert’. I think he always fancied a rather Gilbert and Sullivan relationship, and that is what we had.”

Parker won a Bafta for his work on the second instalment in the BBC’s House of Cards trilogy, To Play the King, as well as being nominated for a similar award for his composition on the first.

He won three more Baftas in consecutive years from 1997 for his work on The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and A Rather English Marriage.

Parker was born in Hartlepool in 1934 and began his music career as an oboist in a British army band based in postwar West Germany.

He joined the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra before becoming a member of the Barrow Poets, a poetry and music group that recorded six albums and worked with poets including Stevie Smith. That led to the collaboration with Betjeman, which proved a springboard for the rest of his career, his family said.

Parker is survived by his wife of 54 years, Pauline Parker, and their two daughters, Claire and Amy, and a daughter, Louise, from an earlier marriage.

Film scores include music for numerous feature-length television films and for new prints of the classic silent films Girl Shy, by Harold Lloyd, and The Blot, a 1921 film directed by Lois Weber.

Parker won the British Academy Award for Best Original Television Music four times, and wrote scores for over two hundred programmes. His work in film and television ranged from music for Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, Midsomer Murders, Born and Bred, Foyle's War, The House of Eliott, and Mapp & Lucia to the score for the contemporary political thrillers House of Cards (UK version), To Play the King and The Final Cut. The opening and closing theme music for those television series is entitled "Francis Urquhart's March." With Tom Stanier he wrote the music for schools programmes such as Watch, Zig Zag and Fourways Farm plus musicals such as Blast Off: Mr Jones Goes to Jupiter.

Concert works were written for the Nash Ensemble, Philip Jones Brass, The Hilliard Ensemble, The Albion Ensemble, The Wallace Collection and Poems on the Underground. His published compositions include "A Londoner in New York" for brass, "Mississippi Five" for wind quintet, "The Golden Section" for brass quintet, and a clarinet concerto. He was also the recipient of an honorary degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.