Ed O'Brien co-writes the music for the BBC's Eureka Street

The soundtrack album of Eureka Street, the BBC's four-part adaptation of Robert McLiam Wilson's 1996 novel, is out today on BBC Music, with its music credited to Ed O'Brien and Martin Phipps. On screen, where the series began on BBC Two a week ago, the music is credited to Phipps, and the BFI lists O'Brien, with Dave Munday, on guitars. Discogs names O'Brien as a writer on five of the album's 20 tracks.

The drama is set in present-day Belfast around a repo man, Jake Jackson, and his friends, and NME called it the most expensive drama filmed in Northern Ireland. Its four hour-long episodes run until 4 October.

O'Brien named Eureka Street as one of his favourite novels when the commission was announced in May. It's a great book, I was completely blown away by it.¹

NME reported on 3 May that Radiohead had written all of the series' incidental music, purely instrumental, and called it the first original score the band had written. Until then they had given existing recordings to soundtracks, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet the best known. A spokeswoman said it was something the band really wanted to do for themselves, as fans of Wilson's writing, and Wilson returned the compliment.

Their music cheers me up, oddly. I know it's not meant to but it does.

Robert McLiam Wilson¹