Jonathan Creek: Difference between revisions

** "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.

* [[Best Served Cold]]: {{spoiler|The central plot behind "The Judas Tree"}}.

* [[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]].

{{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".

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

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

* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]]: In "Angel Hair", Jonathan works out the core mystery pretty quickly but keeps schtum about it while he tries to work out the details. To help Carla along, he writes two proverbs on a piece of paper and she spends half the episode trying to find any hidden meaning in it. After spending hours agonizing over it, her husband leans over and casually notes that it's {{spoiler|the first two lines to Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", in the wrong order}}.

** 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).