Jonathan Creek and Living Happily Ever After

Jonathan Creek has,with its latest series, attracted a lot of flak, but I thought the final episode, The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, was by far the best of the three episodes we've seen this year. It's no coincidence, I'm sure, that writer David Renwick borrowed the title of this one from Carter Dickson, aka John Dickson Carr, the master of the locked room mystery, whose work has been such an influence on Jonathan Creek - not only because of the intricate plots, but also because both Carr and Renwick share a love of humour.

This story scored because there was a strong central mystery - a minister's clever wife is kidnapped, and incarcerated in a confined space (although admittedly one with a highly convenient opening that was necessary for the plot to work.) There was plenty of mystifying elements, including a sudden death in a bath, a moving corpse, a mysterious pink butterfly and identical twins both played by June Whitfield. What more could anyone want? Well, a good plot, of course. I thought that Renwick delivered.

Some criticism of the first two episodes was overdone, in my opinion. The locked room mystery is inherently artificial and if John Dickson Carr's stories were adapted for TV nowadays, they would attract plenty of criticism because of their implausibility. But part of the genius of Carr (and Renwick) lies in the ingenious ways in which they distract attention from the sheer unlikelihood of their scenarios. Here, a funny sub-plot including the sex-starved wife Josie Lawrence was very effective.

Having said all that, I accept that Jonathan Creek has lost its novelty value. And part of the problem lies in the fact that Jonathan is now happily married. His wife is delightful, and here she was better integrated into the storyline than in previous episodes. But how many top detectives are happily married (remembering that even the uxurious Wexford was tempted elsewhere, and so was the grumpily faithful Jim Taggart)? Speaking of John Dickson Carr, Dr Gideon Fell was married - but his wife pretty much disappeared from sight after a book or two. Father Brown never married, of course, and we all know about Sherlock.

Yes, there are some happily married cops,but not that many. Why? The answer is surely simple. Readers and viewers prefer conflict to happiness. In the Golden Age, Inspector French and Superintendent Wilson were very good husbands, but not the most exciting chaps to read about, not by a long way. The unresolved sexual tension between Jonathan and Caroline Quentin in the early shows was part of their appeal. That's been lost now, and all we have is a bit of mild bickering, which is less gripping.

This is a dilemma that countless writers have to grapple with - including me. For what is to be the fate of Hannah Scarlett's relationship with Daniel Kind in the Lake District Mysteries? Can they find true love and yet remain interesting to readers? I'm mulling this over right now....

Jonathan Creek - The Letters of Septimus Noone - BBC One TV review

Jonathan Creek returned tonight, and joy of joys, The Letters of Septimus Noone is not a one-off, but the first episode of a short series. Jonathan Creek's investigations, devised by the witty and clever David Renwick, revived interest in the locked room/impossible crime story in the nineties, a remarkable as well as welcome feat, at a time when the form seemed long past its sell-by date. It's a marvellous example of how a gifted writer can breathe fresh life into a traditional and apparently old-fashioned form, making it seem topical and great fun all over again.

Renwick has - wisely, I think - decided that he simply could not ignore the passage of time since Jonathan Creek first appeared on our screens. So Alan Davies, as Creek, still has a female "Dr Watson", but this time he's married to her: and the dynamic is very different to the tantalising relationship he had with Caroline Quentin in the early shows. Polly Creek is the most glamorous of Watsons, played by Sarah Alexander. The job as magician's assistant, the duffel coat and the windmill-house have gone too.

Renwick's sharp humour, and love of classic detective fiction, were very much in evidence. So we had a musical based on Gaston Leroux's once-celebrated locked room mystery, The Mystery of the Yellow Room (an excellent choice bearing in mind that Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera was immortalised by Andrew Lloyd Webber) and there were several neat word games, as well as sly nods to the success of Sherlock, a show written with the same appealing blend of playfulness and intelligence.

It's very, very difficult to write a locked room mystery that translates well to television, a point which I think some of those who have criticised recent one-off Creek stories tend to overlook. Here, Renwick offered a handful of small puzzles, rather than an over-arching mystery. This meant the story felt a little fragmentary, but it didn't matter too much. Jonathan Creek remains a show that has great appeal to all fans of classic detective fiction..

(By the way, there have been some excellent comments on this post but you may wish to avoid them until you have seen the show as they include observations on the plot.)