Now, there's no denying that this once great black comedy mystery show jumped the shark a while ago, then systematically hunted down the shark's friends and families and jumped over them, then put them all in a big tank somewhere, put a trampoline over it and have been bouncing up and down ever since.
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| She found unsolvable crimes for her book, and he solved them! |
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| He appeared on her husband's crime-watch show to explain unsolvable crimes! |
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| He only got involved to solve the unsolvable crimes she couldn't work out on her own blog! |
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| She married him and now they hang around a cliched village full of eccentrics doing sod all. |
Personally I rate The Coonskin Cap as the point things went all wrong, but the next series or two more or less managed to retain a good level or so. Then came the specials where David Renwick pours a whole season of impossible twists into hour-long episodes revolving around an ancient mystery that isn't actually that mysterious. I guessed every single solution and trick this time which the exception of the "weak force" bit and the ultimate revelation of who the villain was, though I got the motivation right.
The last series of Jonathan Creek - despite the novel first episode which blatantly a dig at Sherlock where a Benedict Cumberbatch wannabe spectacularly fails to solve a mystery that we, the audience have already seen explained to us at the time - was beyond dire. Rather than the basic premise, where impossible crimes are solved by an antisocial savant genius, are now slightly odd childhood memories that require an ageing neurotic house husband to explain in between complaining about everything and JC has gone from a reluctant savant to Alan Davies being pissed off about the fact he lives in a big country house with Sarah Alexander willing to have sex with him every hour god sends.
Characterization has gone through the window once again with JC now yearning to solve crimes but now being completely and utterly crap at it (his own words, with even old cases coming back to haunt him) while his adventure-loving wife is now a paranoid shut-in who has absolutely no affection for her husband at all. She's also made a moron, unable to recognize the name Alfred Hitchcock or the word antimony despite her first appearance having her an avid theatre-goer with a family in the entertainment industry, plus running a diary company where things like toxic metal poisoning might be an ongoing concern.
We are also told that JC has a long-lost brother who inspired him to become a magician and his parents were ashamed of this life choice - which totally contradicts the story told in House of Monkeys where he was an only child with two eccentric parents too busy exploring the Amazon to fuss about JC's life choices.
And since this is a direct sequel to the House of Monkeys, that's a bit stupid. Mind you, that tale involved a cunning Moriarty-esque sociopath and animal rights liberationist achieve the perfect crime by tricking a guy into killing himself with a samurai sword via hallucinogenic sticky envelopes. Such a criminal wanting vengeance would no doubt be a careful tale of subtle manipulation and traps.
No, it turns out he's a skin-head with a knife who runs into places and stabs anyone in a duffel coat.
And oddly enough he is after Jonathan despite the fact that Maddy, Annette Crosbie and co, plus a police investigation were also to blame. Why the evil bloke runs to the windmill Jonathan hasn't lived in for a decade on the off-chance that a delivery van might have his new address is boggling.
Anyway, the plot of Demons Roost would be entertaining if it was half an hour short and not so blatantly obvious and with "mysteries" that a child could work out or completely ridiculous.
- man with stroke unable to communicate tries to talk to his daughter about vital matter
- said man does so by looking at her mobile phone, then the open living room door again and again
- keeps doing this, faster and faster, until he has another fatal stroke
OMG, what was his last desperate message?!?
Well, according to JC he was looking not at the the open door but the movie poster on the door (of which only the letter Y could be seen) and trying to tell us a minor character was an imposter.
Phone... y... get it?
No. That's up there with "Oh no, my dad's accidentally cut his head off with a chainsaw, I better hide his severed head to trick my mum that he's been murdered by supernatural forces, that might make his loss a little easier to bare since she's such a rationalist skeptic" in idocy.
But my main issue... and it's a very big issue... is the nigh-traditional bit where the bad guy attacks Jonathan and his latest bird. In days gone past this has been either played for pathos on the attacker's past, comedy from Jonathan getting beaten up, or Jonathan using magic skills to save the day.
I remember Maddy's last episode where Jonathan uses a card trick to blind a psycho and save the day.
This time Jonathan uses an animatronic puppet to beat the psycho up, knocks him into a furnace, douses him with gasoline, then gets his wife to light a match and set fire to the guy. Then he closes a hatch on the guy and leaves him to burn. The next scene has them totally fine with this and talking about something else.
Jonathan Creek cold-bloodedly murdered a guy in a truly horrible manner.
He doesn't even feel bad about it!
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| And you're his next victim... |
Having lost the interesting characters and interesting mysteries, Renwick has finally removed the even vague impediment that his regulars not be killers!
If there's another series, perhaps it will now be JC trying to get away with murders instead of solving them.
Frankly, if he starts with the production team, all the better.
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| The husband and wife who slay together, stay together. |
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