Sheridan Smith and Alan Davies

After nearly five years off our screens, Jonathan Creek is poised to return for a one-off, two-hour episode scheduled for New Year’s Day.

So why has the duffle coat-sporting sleuth been resurrected now?

OTT asked the series’ creator David Renwick.  “It’s a kind of boring answer,” he said. “I had nothing else to do! I wasn’t bursting with any other bright ideas after we finished Love Soup, which I’ve been doing for the last two or three years. And, erm, it was sort of a safe decision.”
Read the full interview »

Here’s what he said …

It never comes up. I mean the ball’s entirely in David Renwick’s court. After Caroline Quentin left the show, Julia Sawalha came in and we did several episodes. I don’t know if either Julia or Caroline would want to do it again. I don’t honestly know. I don’t know if David wants to. I would do it again! [Laughs]. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person left, going, “Jonathan Creek was great! Why don’t we doJonathan Creek?”. I spend all my time waiting for scripts, reading scripts, or trying to write my own scripts – but nothing’s ever as good … If we ever did it again, I think it would probably be David writing a one-off.

Well, even that would do me. Come on, Mr Renwick, why don’t you do Jonathan Creek?

Contemporary viewers now come to Creek informed by the detection practices of CSI and the character motivations of A Touch of Frost. Whilst Renwick’s creation might scream loudly to the contrary, in today’s television schedule (in which a shared notion of realism seems to permeate all dramas) this latest series of Jonathan Creek is likely to attract a new generation of floating detective show viewers on the hunt for their next “touch of frost”. What will they make of it?

A load of silly nonsense – probably. For those used to the forensic explanations offered up as part of CSI‘s weekly dénouements, Jonathan Creek comes off as ridiculously hackneyed. It’s characterisation is unbelievable; and investigation processes capricious in the extreme. Yet even in this age of Midsomer Murders, 24 and Messiah, nine million people still seem to love Jonathan, and given his steady ratings performance this time out (thrashing Chris Evan’s rusty Boys and Girls) the series now seems destined to pass into Only Fools and Horses-style BBC heritage.

The final outing for Creek (“The Tailor’s Dummy”) was perhaps the most enjoyable of this run. Unlike “The Coonskin Cap” (the first story of this fourth series), it adhered to the programme’s most important self-imposed rule; i.e. “the clues were all in the question”. Jonathan Creek can never be wholly satisfying when the solution relies on an electronic gadget, and consequently this episode’s reliance on lateral thinking instead of an asphyxiating bullet-proof vest was very welcome.

The experienced viewer will by now have learned that the most successful way to crack a Jonathan Creek case is simply to make sure you are asking the right questions. It is to Renwick’s credit that even with this trick partially revealed, the central mystery in “The Tailor’s Dummy” remained engrossing, difficult to figure out and entirely sensible and logical when revealed. Less well packaged though were the motivations that lay behind the character’s actions. Why, for example, did Claude Bergman decide to sleep with hated feature writer Donna Henry? For that matter what exactly was he trying to achieve with his metamorphosis feat? The BBC press release suggests that Bergman wanted to “teach the dogmatic Miss Henry a lesson … by demonstrating that the world is not, as she seems to believe, full of certainties”, yet this driving force is lost on the viewer.

Whilst the dialogue and direction remain important, the success of each episode of Jonathan Creek really relies on the elegance of the plotting. Not only does the “A” story have to satisfy the requirements listed above, but any supplementary action has to unfold in a well thought out and logical manner too. Stick in any old sub-plot and the audience becomes suspicious, fearing that a seemingly inconsequential incident will clumsily assert itself into the main plot later on. In this respect, “The Tailor’s Dummy” disappoints. Bill Bailey’s re-appearance adds absolutely nothing to the episode save to ensnare Jonathan and Carla into a meaningless subplot that disappears like a Jonathan Creek mystery part way through the episode. The notion of some foreign company kidnapping magician’s assistance and shipping them over seas, fails to stand up even in Jonathan Creek‘s vaguely hyper real world. Perhaps external forces, in the shape of the editor have been at work here; certainly it feels as if important little shreds have been shaved off this episode in order to meet the time requirement.

David Renwick has often complained that he feels restricted by the 50 minute format currently afforded to him. In this sense, Jonathan Creek again resembles Only Fools and Horses. Whether Creek is to go the way of Del Boy (both in episode duration and content) remains to be seen. Whilst none of the three episodes of this most recent series have been up there with the best of Jonathan Creek‘s back catalogue, they at least (and unlike Only Fools and Horses) have not represented the programme’s nadir either.

We all remember Saturday nights on BBC1 in the ’70s. Brilliant weren’t they? Saturday night was alright for Basil Brush, Tom Baker, Brucie and Parkie. Saturday night was BBC1 Night from Grandstand through to Match of the Day.

Well … maybe. It’s easy nostalgia like this that’s brought into bat whenever there’s a spate of BBC bashing to be had. But is it fair to compare the ’90s best-day-of-the-week telly to its ’70s forbear? And is it a meaningful comparison, anyway? Probably not, as Sunday nights have long since taken over as the crucial battleground for ratings, leaving Saturdays all but a wasteland when it comes to distinctive quality programming.

But then there’s Jonathan Creek.

In an evening where Jim Davidson sings Boyzone (cf. The Generation Game) Jonathan Creekis something of a peculiarity – an imaginative, quirky, witty piece which successfully targets the family audience without gunging them. How did this sore-thumb of a programme come to be? My theory is that the BBC, as bean-counting, bureaucratic and boring as it’s currently perceived to be, is thankfully still vulnerable to the notion of the auteur. In much the same way that the Corporation was grateful to take anything Jimmy McGovern would give them (and some could say he exploited that with the McGovern-by-numbers The Lakes) it would seem that David Renwick was similarly entrusted to pull another rabbit out of the proverbial. That’s my theory anyway and whilst it pretty much sounds the death knell for new programming coming from the grass roots, it still represents a chance for imaginative, challenging telly.

Ironically, then, tonight’s Creek was the worst one to date, almost parodic in it’s unlikeliness. The essence of Creek is that through the course of our heroes’ investigations an impossible feat is distilled into a mundane, albeit complicated, one. Tonight, however, a pact with the Devil was finally unmasked as the monarchy secretly funding a bastard offspring. This was the impossible transformed into the highly unlikely. Not such an elegant trick.

Yet there was still much to enjoy. The characters of Jonathan and Maddy are now as comfortable to us and as consistent as Eric and Ernie (another touchstone of the ’70s BBC). Similarly the programme has an established structure which it employs very successfully at each outing; the intriguing impossible mystery and the comical B-story which bears only the barest relation to the main plotline. The former is played out before the latter (which finishes up every episode) and both end with a twist in the tale. Formulaic TV, you reckon? Not a bit of it, because it’s within this sturdy structure that Renwick is consistently able to confound and, therefore, delight us. The plotting reveals itself in sparks, in dizzying leaps of logic and, most importantly, in jokes. The pivotal moment of tonight’s Creek occurred whilst we were laughing at a misassumption that Maddy was Jewish (a throwaway gag that ran happily throughout the episode) as she struggled for a seat in the public gallery of a court room where our B-story was taking place. It was here that the camera began it’s inexorable pan in on Jonathan, as watching Maddy kicked off associations in his mind that, for him, unlocked the mystery. Moments like this jump out at the viewer and provoke their involvement (“What has Jonathan realised?”) in a far more active and participatory manner than guessing who’s going to end up at Holby General and with what injury.

If I was 17 again, or 12, or 8, Jonathan Creek would be my favourite programme on the telly.Jonathan Creek is my favourite programme on the telly. It has the verve and confidence to hold the family audience, neither playing down to the younger viewers, nor tipping a wink to the older ones. It’s Basil Brush, Tom Baker, Brucie and Parkie solving crimes … committed by Jim Davidson, Ballsy and Noel Edmonds. In a night’s viewing of unambitious telly, Jonathan Creekis a revelation. An impossibly good programme.