Stephane Grappelli: A Life in the Jazz Century is a well-crafted, deeply researched tribute to the greatest swing fiddler in the history of jazz. Although there's almost nothing here about the personal life of the Parisian violinist, his career in music is traced with a great combination of scholarly precision and affection.

Stephane Grappelli participated fully in the making of this two-hour documentary. His story is told largely through his own reminiscences. He died shortly after filming had finished, aged 89. His creative powers were undimmed; even in his mid-80s he was still flying around the world to bring his gifts to his wildly appreciative audiences.

There were jazz violinists before and after Stephane, some just as gifted and agile. But none seemed to have the special sweet lyricism with which he imbued his playing. He was in a sense haunted by his past -- his greatest period was in the 1930s and 1940s when he was part of The Quintet of the Hot Club of France, partnering the jazz world's finest guitarist, Django Reinhardt. That period remained the summit of his career, but as a performer he resolutely kept looking forward, not back.

Like all great musicians, he could be judged by the company he kept. In those peak years he was able to stand on equal terms with the formidable Django Reinhardt. In later years, after Django's premature death, Stephane's own fame grew and his contacts widened. This self-taught violinist found himself playing alongside classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin. And Menuhin's warm and affectionate remembrances form a special part of this documentary.

Also remarkable are the remembrances of the enfant-terrible of the violin world, Nigel Kennedy. He was barely into his teens when Yehudi brought Stephane to Nigel's music-school, to talk and play. Nigel played alongside Stephane, fiddling on an early adrenalin-high. This was one of the influences on Kennedy which has persisted to this day, with Nigel being one of the few classically-trained musicians able to bridge the worlds of classical and jazz.

The documentary's use of old film clips and photographs is startlingly good. This is where the depth of research shows. I have never before seen such film of Django Reinhardt and the Quintet he and Stephane led. That in itself is a treasure.

The real treasure of course is Stephane himself. This is Stephane with Django, Stephane with Duke Ellington, with George Shearing, with Yehudi Menuhin -- he shines in all companies. In the earliest video clip and the last, his face glows with a sublime smile that sums up his joyous music. It's life-affirming stuff; sweetly swinging dreams.

This two-disc set is one of the most impressive compilations yet put to DVD in any genre.

On disc one we have the full program, with a choice of audio tracks -- track two is minus most narration, except for Stephane's own reminiscences. Apart from Stephane, this makes is a virtual 'isolated music' audio track.

On disc two we begin with 11 bonus chapters of material deleted from the program for reasons of sheer length. They are all fascinating additions to the program; it's good to have them in this form.

Then we have the greatest treasure --seven music clips tracing Stephane's career, from pre-Quintet days through to the 1990s. The long sequence featuring the Quintet of the Hot Club of France just shines.

There is 'A Story-Teller's Chronicle', a documentary tracing Paul Balmer's struggle to get the program made and filmed in time to properly chronicle Stephane's life while Stephane was still around to talk about it. Time was running out, and a difficult commitment had to be made - the program eventually had to be made before a sponsor or buyer for it was found.

There's a television promotion for the feature, and a presentation of exhaustive research notes which give sources for all the music used in the show.

And there's a bibliography and discography. I checked the discography to see how thorough it was. Would it only give the Decca-sourced recordings of Grappelli, or had it been compiled to give the absolute best sources for his music? The test, I thought, would be if the documentary makers cited the small specialist English JSP label as providing the best possible transfers to CD of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France recordings. They did.

There's a list of key websites to visit, and there is an animated jukebox with nine recordings taken from Stephane's career. Press the button, and listen to the music while the TV shows a shiny LP revolving at a leisurely 33-3 revolutions per minute.

There's 'Stephane's Shoebox', a montage of his own photographs of his childhood, and through his career. These photo-files are often boring, and with postage-sized blurry images. These are full-screen high-resolution scans, of suitably high quality.

Last of all is a map of Montmartre, coded to show photographs of key locations of Stephane's life. It's a great assembly of extras, well planned and perfectly executed.

The film image quality is uniformly high. The old video clips have been restored with care. There's some significant audio deterioration evident in some of the older audio and video material, but for the most part the audio is clean and precise.