Jonathan Creek: Difference between revisions

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The show's chief theme was the same one expressed by [[Sherlock Holmes]] in his aphorism "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth". Jonathan would explain that most people are much more willing to consider something 'impossible' or invent a supernatural explanation, than allow themselves to believe that a man would put himself to the trouble of arranging a complex set of events to make it ''look'' that way. Jonathan takes this one step further by pointing out that most people are eager to believe extraordinary phenomena simply because the solutions are mind-numbingly banal: “People beg me to explain, but it’s the last thing you want to hear. Because I’m disproving a miracle.”

 

Seasons 1-3 aired between 1997 and 2000. A Christmas special aired in 2001, introducing TV presenter Carla Burrego as Maddy's replacement and was followed by a full fourth season in 2003-04. Although a full revival seems unlikely, there have been a couple of feature-length specials (featuring third female sidekick, Joey Ross), one at New Year 2009, and one at Easter 2010.

{{tropelist}}

* [[Always Murder]]: Averted, although murder is involved in at least half the stories.

* [[Amateur Sleuth]]: Jonathan - very reluctantly.

* [[Appeal to Audacity]]: Happened quite a lot, in which suspects and witnesses alike would come up with ridiculous stories - and Jonathan would believe every word, working with the logic that if they were truly covering for a crime, they'd hardly be stupid enough to come up with a story that no one would ever believe.

* [[As Himself]]: In one episode, Adam appears on ''Friday Night with Jonathan Ross''. The various notable actors from other BBC series whose pictures can be seen on the walls in the offices of the company behind Eyes and Ears might also be a partial example.

** "The Scented Room" shows Maddy explaining to her psychiatrist that unfortunately she won't be able to publish the story, since she and Jonathan sided with the perpetrator against the [[Asshole Victim]]. Presumably she doesn't publish other cases of the sort as well. Out of interest, the [[Asshole Victim]] in this particular case wasn't a murder victim, but simply a smarmy critic who had a valuable painting stolen.

* [[Authentication by Newspaper]]: Subverted in the 2008 special.

* [[Banana Peel]]: After seeing an advertisement invoking this trope, Jonathan tries to prove that it could never happen. He finally slips and falls backwards... but is still proved correct considering it was actually a dog turd that he slipped on.

* [[Big Eater]]: Maddy.

* [[Black Comedy Rape]]: In a deleted scene in "The Grinning Man", Joey's actress friend Mina gives her tickets to her new play and warns her that there's a graphic rape scene. Cut to Mina getting taken from behind by a man in a papier-mâché bull's head making loud mooing noises.

* [[British Brevity]]: A very notable example, because Renwick needs a lot of time to formulate each locked room mystery.

'''Maddy''': Why not?

'''Jonathan''': ''Roy Pilgrim''! I can't meet ''Roy Pil''... you're talking about ''mythology''! You reduce someone like that to flesh and blood, the whole thing's destroyed, the whole ''icon''...

** Sure enough, a minor case ensues; Jonathan is struck dumb with mild disillusionment when he learns that Pilgrim is a devoted viewer of ''[[The Waltons]]''.

* [[The Butler Did It]]: {{spoiler|Played straight in "Black Canary"}}.

* [[The Cassandra]]: Jack Holiday's wife, who insists that a recently released prisoner was responsible for her husband's death, despite all evidence to the contrary.

* [[Chekhov's Skill]]: Card-throwing in "The Three Gamblers".

* [[Christmas Episode]]: Three so far, all movie-length, two of which were also introductory episodes to Jonathan's new sidekicks.

* [[Clingy Jealous Girl]]: Maddy. Not particularly clingy, but at one stage she gets so irritated with Jonathan that she locks him out of her apartment simply because she saw another woman getting into his car.

* [[Completely Missing the Point]]: When Carla freaks out over the fact that her husband was once married to a man, all he can do is casually chide her about the fact that she's being "a bit homophobic."

* [[Connect the Deaths]]: Deconstructed/critized in the episode "The Coonskin Cap" in which Carla's crime show speculates that a recent serial killer is targeting women that have floral names, the three victims being called Rose, Iris and Heather. It turns out that two murders were the work of {{spoiler|a disturbed young woman who had no discernable motive}} and the third was by {{spoiler|a police officer who used the first two deaths as a cover for his own murder}}. The names were a coincidence, but until it was cleared up, Jonathan points out that thanks to the show's fear-mongering, women named after flowers were scared out of their wits (including a publicist called "Coral", at least until Jonathan tells her that coral is actually an animal).

* [[Derailing Love Interests]]: Nicola from "The Grinning Man" dumps Jonathan in order to run off with a man she's never met.

* [[Detective Drama]]

* [[Drives Like Crazy]]: The DI in "Mother Redcap" which greatly unnerves Jonathan.

** Maddy, at times. At one point Jonathan freaks out because she's dialing a number on her cellphone whilst driving.

* [[Establishing Character Moment]]: Jonathan is first seen in a grocery store, mentally tallying up the numbers that appear on the checkout computer screen and then insisting that the total sum is wrong. One manager with a calculator later, the checkout is closed thanks to the faulty equipment. What further establishes his character (slightly weird but essentially decent and good-hearted) is that it's the shopping of the woman in front of him that he's figuring out is charged wrong, not his own.

** Adam Klaus is first seen making a heartfelt and sincere thank you to an audience, calling them the best crowd he's ever performed for. The next camera shot reveals that it's an empty theatre, and he's just rehearsing.

* [[Fair Play Whodunnit]]: The audience typically has the same set of clues that Jonathan does (bar one or two pieces of evidence - often police or medical records - that would make the result too easy), but the solutions often take a bit of lateral thinking, making this an interesting case.

** Also subverted in that the audience rarely knows whether an episode is going to be a whodunnit or a howdunnit until [[The Summation]].

*** No matter what explanation you prefer, Klaus is obviously a jerk and a shiester, but obviously a skilled performer obsessed with his own image, so all of the above are easily within his character.

* [[Fan Boy]]: In "No Trace Of Tracy", Jonathan completely geeks out when he gets to investigate a case surrounding his prog-rock idol, Roy Pilgrim.

* [[Finger in the Mail]]: The titular hair in "Angel Hair".

* [[Funny Background Event]]: Twice. In "No Trace of Tracy", Maddy interviews a man in a sound-proof room whilst his colleagues have a brawl in the two-way mirror behind them, and in "Time Waits for Norman", Maddy holds a conversation with a man outside his house whilst Jonathan snoops around for clues and gets attacked by a vicious Jack Russell. A dismayed Maddy sees all this through the bay windows.

* [[Gaslighting]]: In "The Judas Tree". Jonathan also refers to the Trope Namer during the episode.

* [[Gender Blender Name]]: Joey Ross in the 2009 special, the character being played by an actress who herself has a [[Gender Blender Name]], Sheridan Smith.

{{quote|'''Maddy:''' Yes, all right. Haven't you ever seen a transvestite before?}}

* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: Possibly second only to ''[[Doctor Who]]'' for having a reputation for well-known British actors in unlikely roles.

** The Sixth is the murder victim in the pilot episode.

** And the Eighth appears in the 2010 Easter special "The Judas Tree".

*** The vicar from the same episode is [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E03 Victory of the Daleks|Churchill!]]

** ... and Romana appears in "Satan's Chimney".

** Comedian [[Bob Monkhouse]] as the [[Asshole Victim]] Sylvester Le Fley in "The Scented Room" - Monkhouse later used this as an example for his comment "my non-comedic acting roles tend to be the sort of person who would keep their cocoa warm by burning down an orphanage".

** [[One Foot in the Grave|Margret]] appears as Jonathan's doctor and the wife of the murder victim in "The House of Monkeys".

** Gillian Bailey in "Gorgon's Wood" is also [[Merlin (TV series)|Prince Arthur's mother]].

** [[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|Geoffrey McGivern]] appears in a few episodes as Maddy's publicist.

** [[Bill Bailey]] appears twice as street performer Kenny Starkiss.

* [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice]]: Several times. There is even one example where someone gets impaled by two spikes at the same time.

* [[Informed Ability]]: Although certainly clever and brave, Joey is initially introduced as Jonathan's intellectual equal, described on a television show as "someone whose powers of deduction and truly phenomenal flair for solving seemingly impossibly puzzles are beyond cool." Yet apart from ascertaining that the Nightmare Room is inescapable and discovering a clue that Jonathan misses (one which she slightly misinterprets), she doesn't solve any part of the mystery, and eventually admits: "I'm out of my depth here."

** This is really a case of demonstrating that while some characters may be decent investigators, Jonathan is the [[Always Someone Better]]. This also applies to Mimi Tranter in "Ghosts Forge" and Gideon Pryke in "Black Canary", both of whom are initially introduced as a match for Creek but are always trumped in the end.

* [[Innocent Innuendo]]: Happens quite a few times; usually with Maddy. At one point she tells Jonathan over the phone: "I need you, here in my bedroom." The next scene shows Jonathan taking off his shoes and getting on the bed while Maddy watches nervously...only for Jonathan to reach up and tip the cockroach on the ceiling into a glass jar.

* [[Inn of No Return]]: "Mother Redcap".

* [[Interdisciplinary Sleuth]]: Jonathan [[Magician Detective|designs conjuring tricks]] for a living and is relectantly brought in to the world of crime-fighting by a chance meeting and a love of puzzles.

** Maddy (and Carla and Joey, for that matter) technically avert this trope. While none of them are cops or law enforcement, they are all journalists of different sorts specializing in crime stories.

* [[Knife-Throwing Act]]

* [[Lethal Chef]]: Maddy. Almost literally - Jonathan is appalled to find that she's got a canister of petrol in her kitchen at the same time the gas stove is on. On ''fire'', specifically. The meal turned out alright, funnily enough.

* [[Locked Room Mystery]]: Pretty much the show's trademark, and often [[Lampshaded]]. Even if the mystery isn't literally in a locked room, it will inevitably be an "impossible" mystery in the same vein.

* [[Magician Detective]]: Jonathan's a magician's assistant technically, but he has far more knowledge of the material even than the magician itself, so he definately counts.

* [[Meet Cute]]: Jonathan and Maddy meet at a magic show when Jonathan mistakes Maddy's thumb for a cocktail sausage and sticks a toothpick into it.

* [[Mummies At the Dinner Table]]: In the episode {{spoiler|"The Seer of the Sands"}}.

* [[My Sibling Will Live Through Me]]

* [[The Power of Acting]]: Carla reminds Jonathan in "Satan's Chimney" that all the suspects are trained actors who will naturally be able to put up a convincing show of grief for the murder victim.

* [[Only Sane Employee]]: Jonathan's role within the Alan Klaus magic act appears to be all the first three entries in the [[Real Life]] section of this trope at once.

* [[Operation: Jealousy]]: Maddy tries this in "The Reconstituted Corpse", but unfortunately her date ends up looking and acting like (in Jonathan's words) "The bastard son of [[Forrest Gump]]."

* [[Put on a Bus to Hell]]: This didn't ''exactly'' happen to Carla Burrego, but in "The Grinning Man" she still gets a rather mean-spirited mention, in which Jonathan Creek learns that she's been telling people that he died of a wasting illness. Apparently writer David Renwick and actress Julia Sawalha didn't get along, which may explain the pettiness of the comments.

* [[Quote Mine]]: Sinister example in "Satan's Chimney", using an edited recording.

* [[Rear Window Witness]]: In "The Problem at Gallows Gate", Adam's sister Kitty witnesses a murder through a pair of high-powered binocculars during a badger watch.

* [[Red Herring]]: Being a mystery series, this is par for the course. There is, however, a tendency to play with and subvert the idea of a red herring - clues dismissed early on as insignificant will often come back in an unexpected way. Of course, other times it is played deadly straight.

* [[Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts]]: "Satan's Chimney" and "The Grinning Man", to name two examples.

* [[Screw the Money, I Have Rules]]: Jonathan in "The Scented Room", when [[Asshole Victim]] Le Fley (who had given scathing criticism to Jonathan's magic shows in the past) offers a huge financial reward for finding his missing painting.

** Although the [[Unresolved Sexual Tension]] common to Maddy and Carla is averted for the most part with Joey. Otherwise played straight.

* [[Sweetie Graffiti]]: A clue in "Gorgon's Wood", though it wasn't carved by "sweethearts".

* [[Thanatos Gambit]]: {{spoiler|Andre Masson}} rigs up his suicide to make it look as though he's been murdered by one of his employees.

* [[Time-Delayed Death]]

* [[Toad Licking]]: A hallucinogenic toad turned out to be a major plot point in one episode. The toad wasn't native to England and had been imported by a local hippie colony for this very purpose. The presence of the toad, allegedly in the prime suspect's house, was what led to Jonathan solving the case he was working on.

* [[Traitor Shot]]: Used frequently with [[Red Herring|suspects]], yet Maddy was instinctively good at spotting them.

* [[Twin Switch]]: Used in "The Black Canary" in which one twin takes over her sister's life after her accidental death in order to spare her family the grief. In a twist on expectations, the discovery itself ''wasn't'' a big twist - Jonathan had it figured out by the middle of the episode, and the mystery is finding out how the latter twin died (though of course, the switch played a significant part in motivation).

** Also the basis of the same character's career. The twins were magicians and most of their act was based around the fact that the audience was unaware that the magician was actually two people.

* [[Unreliable Narrator]]: When the crime is shown being committed in flashback during [[The Summation]], this is often just Jonathan's hypothesis rather than what actually happened - sometimes because all the witnesses are dead, or because the suspect doesn't confirm it until after he's spoken. This rarely comes up, however - the best example is in the pilot "The Wrestler's Tomb", where we see the main suspect pulling off the impossible alibi that would let her commit the crime as Jonathan explains how it could happen - {{spoiler|but at the end we find out she wasn't the killer, so she never did the acts shown in the earlier reconstruction scene. Heck, Jonathan even admits immediately after the aforementioned summation that while it's a working theory it hinges on too many random things going right to be plausible}}.

* [[Unresolved Sexual Tension]]: Like any good male/female detective team, Maddy and Jonathan have this in spades. [[Lampshaded]] in the first episode, when Jonathan point-blank asks Maddy if she's trying to bed him.

** Plenty of [[UST]] with Carla as well, with the added twist that between their first and second meetings, she's got married.

* [[The Watson]]: Maddy, Carla, Joey.

** From "The Judas Tree": whatever happened to the man in the grass? Did anyone ever find him, or did he die out there?

* [[What Have We Ear?]]: Jonathan and Adam do this on a few occasions (but Jonathan draws the line when Adam asks him to design a trick that allows him to pull a postage stamp from under the Queen's tongue).

* [[Xanatos Roulette]]: The plot of "The Judas Tree" hinges on the assumption that Emily {{spoiler|wouldn't just quit her job}} and the local vicar {{spoiler|wouldn't be asked to identify the body}}.

* [[You Got Murder]]: Occurs in {{spoiler|"The House of Monkeys"}} in which a self-addressed envelope laced with poison is sent to the victim. On licking the flap, he trips out on hallucinogenic drugs and manages to {{spoiler|impale himself on a sword}}.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:TV Series]]

[[Category:Detective TV Series]]