Thu 9 Sep 2010
A British TV Review by Geoff Bradley: JONATHAN CREEK “The Judas Tree.”
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[6] Comments
JONATHAN CREEK. “The Judas Tree.” BBC-TV, 04 April 2010. Alan Davies (Jonathan Creek), Stuart Milligan (Adam Klaus), Sheridan Smith, with Natalie Walter, Paul McGann. Director: David Renwick.
Earlier this year we have had a one-off “Easter Special” of this long-running series (the first one was in 1997) with the 95-minute (no adverts) “The Judas Tree”.
When the series first started (back in 1997) it was a breath of fresh air, with impossible crimes — some with supernatural overtones — solved by a charismatic but entirely rational detective.
In recent years, although the puzzles continue to beguile, the explanations fail to convince. The elaborate plots are still of great interest but the unravelling of them leaves, much to be explained.
Also, now that we have “specials” rather than series we get longer stories which are padded out by entirely unfunny comedy sequences with magician Adam Klaus, Creek’s employer in his day-job. (At least this time not as preposterously as in the previous Creek, the Christmas 2008 special.)
Anyway, in this one Creek is called in when Emily Somerton, housekeeper to crime writer Hugo Dore, encounters some strange happenings. Soon there is a violent death and Emily is accused of the crime. The explanation, when it comes, is ingenious all right, but unfortunately full of holes.
I enjoyed watching it as it went along and the explanation that we got was good, even very good, in parts but the overall feeling was one of disappointment.
As an interesting aside we saw the dust wrappers of five of Dore’s books and I was obsessive enough to copy them down. Each was subtitled “An Ellison Starberth Mystery” and the titles were:
The Gilded Unicorn.
Blind Skeleton Murders.
The Case of the Whispering Attic.
The Riddle at Hangman’s Cloister.
The Four Wax Footmen.
The first two seem to be a nod to John Dickson Carr (a combination of The Gilded Man and The Unicorn Murders, followed by The Blind Barber and The Skeleton in the Clock possibly) and just maybe the last is also (The Four False Weapons and The Waxworks Murder [UK title], maybe).
But I have no idea about the other two. Any suggestions would be very welcome.
September 10th, 2010 at 12:30 am
I loved this when it started, and while I’m sorry to hear later ones aren’t as good as the originals, I’ll still have to watch. Even mediocre CREEK is better than 99% of the other crap it is competing with.
September 10th, 2010 at 1:15 am
For THE RIDDLE AT HANGMAN’S CLOISTER, I was reminded right away of Dorothy Sayers’ HANGMAN’S HOLIDAY, but so far I can’t match “Cloister” in any of her work. Perhaps a mashup with another author?
And for THE FOUR WAX FOOTMEN, there’s Ngaio Marsh’s DEATH AND THE DANCING FOOTMAN, but the preceding “Four Wax…” is somewhat reminiscent of THE FOUR ARMOURERS and THE NINE WAXED FACES by Francis Beeding.
For WHISPERING ATTIC, I’ve gotten nowhere. Sounds more like a Nancy Drew title than anything else.
September 10th, 2010 at 5:36 am
The newest Creeks are better than the awful ones with Julia Sawalha, but they don’t come close to the original series with Caroline Quentin. Alan Davies is pretty much the same as he always was, however. It’s just the plotting that isn’t up to snuff.
September 10th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
I have a possible Carr for the WHISPERING ATTIC — THE CASE OF THE CONSTANT SUICIDES and HE WHO WHISPERS with ATTIC a reference to “The Dark Tower?”
As for the RIDDLE OF THE HANGMAN’s CLOISTER I’m stumped. Unless it is PROBLEM OF THE WIRE CAGE and THE LOST GALLOWS or the short “The Hangman Won’t Wait”, or “The Other Hangman”?
But then again we may have too much time on our hands and may be attributing far too much cleverness to the writer or producer.
September 10th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
It may be a blind alley, but “RIDDLE” featured in the titles of many of Thomas Hanshew’s Cleek mysteries, and any true Carr fan might easily know how much he enjoyed those, so it might serve a double meaning as a play on the word ‘PROBLEM’ and a reference to one of Carr’s favorite writers.
September 11th, 2010 at 3:30 am
David Renwick has made plain his debt to John Dickson Carr in several interviews. When he first conceived the series, the idea was to create ‘something like Columbo’: a show not relying on car chases and violent action, and rather more traditional. Whilst researching the genre, he came upon JDC and decided to follow the impossible crime route. I suspect that any subtle references to Carr are probably deliberate (in his series ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE he shows his love of Horror/Classic detection when gives episodes titles like THE VALLEY OF FEAR/RETURN OF THE SPECKLED BAND/WE HAVE PUT HER LIVING IN THE TOMB. This can also be seen in his earlier show HOT METAL, which has titles like THE MODERN PROMETHEUS or CASTING THE RUNES).
I’ve enjoyed all of the shows so far. The only problem that I had with THE JUDAS TREE was that it was insufficiently explained at the end. I would have liked one of those ‘So X is in prison, but we will never know if Z killed Y’ type of pronouncements from the leading character. Having Renwick direct as well as write the story may have been the problem here. I also felt that once the central ‘trick’ was uncovered at the end, it wouldn’t have been very difficult for very simple forensic evidence to have proved Creek’s hypothesis.
Am I the only one who likes the comedy elements? It’s worth remembering that Renwick is essentially a comedy writer who has had a go at the detective business. All the stuff about Adam Klaus was part of the original hour long series (the only reason it isn’t foregrounded in season 1 was that the budget wouldn’t stretch far enough). If there is more comedy in the feature length stories, it’s only because at 100-something minutes episode length, there’s more of everything.
I’m hoping that they do more of these, as Sheridan Smith works well in the show. Some of the Julia Sawalha episodes are pretty well plotted, but they suffer slightly from the central relationship of the characters not quite working. The Caroline Quentin shows are probably the best overall.