Jonathan Creek

Jonathan Creek is a changed man. He's got a fancy new office and a new job to go with it. But he can't shake Sheridan Smith's Joey Ross off that easily. When a dead body vanishes from a locked study, it occurs to her that the mystery would be right up Creek's alley. But can she persuade him to get back in the game?

While we were only able to view a ten-minute taster of this feature-length Easter special, we're guessing she manages it. Featuring guest turns from Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall and Joanna Lumley, this should whet the appetites of the devoted (of whom there are a surprising amount) for the new three-part series planned for next year.

Radio Times review

When we first see Jonathan Creek, there's something horribly wrong. In place of the familiar shabby duffel coat, he's wearing a suit and apparently doing something "grown-up, responsible and creatively challenging" in the world of marketing. However, after Joey Ross brings news of a corpse that's mysteriously disappeared without a trace despite being locked in a study guarded by his wife, the detective is straight back on the case (and in his usual attire).

This locked-room scenario is one that writer David Renwick has employed before, but this time he throws in all sorts of murder-mystery clichés, including a spooky country house; memories of a macabre death at a Catholic girls school 50 years earlier; and a sinister local society. It's a confusion of every Midsomer Murders and Agatha Christie you've ever seen, with elaborate interlocking clues and dead ends.

But alongside Alan Davies and Sheridan Smith is a cracking supporting cast that includes Joanna Lumley, Nigel Planer and Rik Mayall who ham it up beautifully.

Creek creator David Renwick delivers a new feature-length case for the inquisitive illusionist. At the home of a politically charged polymath, a body is discovered which mysteriously appears to be more mobile than your average cadaver. Paranormal investigator Joey Ross tries to coax Creek out of retirement in order to undercover the truth. Alan Davies and Sheridan Smith are joined by a guest cast including Joanna Lumley, Nigel Planer and, making a welcome return to our screens, Rik Mayall.

Jonathan Creekused to be on every week - and, OK, it was a decent enough show for a Saturday night.

These days it pops up once in a blue moon, as a one-off episode like tonight's (9pm, BBC1), and for reasons I can't quite fathom, it's trumpeted as some kind of major TV event.

All right, maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Maybe my opinion is clouded by the fact Alan Davies gets on my wick.

But packing an episode with guest stars - tonight's include Rik Mayall, Joanna Lumley and Sarah Alexander - and giving this plot more twists and turns than a twisty-turny thing, can't disguise the show's basic weakness.

Namely, that the "body mysteriously vanishing from a locked room" business, though admittedly only one element of this latest case, is kind of tired now.

Alan Davies and Sheridan Smith are reunited for a one-off 90-minute special of paranormal sleuthing.

And the even better news is that they'll be shooting three more episodes in the autumn.

It's been more than eight years since a full Jonathan Creek series - and creator and writer David Renwick has come up with a brain-boggling puzzle and guest stars to tempt viewers back.

A dead man (Nigel Planer, no less) who's been seen and photographed by witnesses vanishes out of a locked room where the door is being guarded by none other than national treasure Joanna Lumley.

Also back in the fray is Rik Mayall as detective inspector Gideon Pryke, who last appeared in an episode called The Black Canary in 2008.

His circumstances have changed too - rather drastically. Since we last saw him, he's been left paralysed from the neck down apart from the use of one finger, which he uses to operate his wheelchair and to search for information on the internet.

For Joey Ross (Smith), who teamed up with Creek for the two specials in 2009 and 2010, the case is too tantalising to pass up.

But when she tracks down her old pal she's amazed at the new life he's carved out for himself since they last tackled a riddle.

And his reaction to the mystery sounds like a lament that could have come from any crime or detective writer.

"There will be an explanation," the sleuth calmly predicts. "It will all be very weird and wonderful and once you've fathomed it, everyone will be deeply underwhelmed and you'll wonder why you bothered."

Alan Davies: I'm usually the butt of my own jokes

The star of Jonathan Creek talks QI, his cancelled series Whites and finding his way in the world of comedy.

The Clue Of The Savant's Thumb review

As a special, Savant's Thumb is ambitious but disappointing; lacking the ingenuity or the pervading sense of fear that other feature-length episodes like Black Canary and The Grinning Man have possessed.

The last time we met the veteran solver of impossible mysteries was three Easters ago and the intervening years have seen a disconcerting transformation. Suited and booted, his curls now swept back in greying executive waves, it seems Creek (Alan Davies) has sold his soul to Mammon, or the advertising industry at least. But can he resist the lure of his favourite old-style puzzle - yet another locked-room mystery? His on-off sidekick Joey Ross (Sheridan Smith) sums it up: "A dead man in a room, seen and photographed by witnesses, evaporates into thin air. Walls, floors and ceiling are all rock solid. No way could he have got out the window or through the door which was being watched the whole time. And yet..." (No change in the basic plot then.) Creek professes to be uninterested in the affair until he learns that the victim was celebrated intellectual Franklin Tartikoff (Nigel Planer), and the chief witness his famously matter-of-fact wife Rosalind (Joanna Lumley). But meanwhile Creek's paraplegic arch-rival Gideon Pryke (Rik Mayall) has got his sole functioning digit wrapped round the investigation. A starry cast, a festering rivalry, a mind-boggling puzzle; for many the perfect Easter Bank Holiday drama.

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Rik Mayall interview

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