Jonathan Creek and the curious lack of mystery
Watching the latest Jonathan Creek, you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd switched writers. But no, its the same man from the very start, writing these episodes. Perhaps he's just run out of ideas, but one wonders why he is still going if so.In the previous one-off special we had an incredibly stupid mystery involving self decapitation using a chainsaw, a head hidden in a globe, and a squad of police assassins trying to stop a fake video of Tony Blair talking about Iraq going viral. That was... pretty stupid.
This episode wasn't particularly stupid, it was just a bit dull. The episode begun by telling us how the central mystery, which was actually reasonably clever, was done, thus rendering one of the key tensions of the show moot. To be fair, the show set up another couple of mysteries:
1)The disappearing ashes. This was potentially interesting, but the solution was dull and essentially unguessable (apparently she forgot she owned a roomba?)
2)The letters. Now this one was unguessable, and really, really stupid. Would anyone do that on their death bed?
3)the missing watermark, I have to admit I didn't actually realise this was a puzzle until the solution came up, so yeah....
All in all, an uninspiring bunch. The show might have survived if the plot itself had been gripping, but it was a set of fairly unconnected vignettes, with the central story of Creek's wife's father's death being tonally all over the place. His wife is surprisingly unaffected by the death of her father, to the point where I turned to my wife and said "wait... she's giving... him a comforting massage at the end of the day? Eh?"
The one thing I slightly enjoyed was the silly Sherlock spoof, but the show really took it too far. Oh well, at least we've got two more episodes. Perhaps one of them will be any good.
posted by Mr K @ 5:29 pm
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