Jonathan Creek: Season 3

Jonathan Creek teams up, once again, with unorthodox investigative writer Maddy Magellan to solve seemingly impossible crimes. With Maddy's inquiring mind and Jonathan's ability to 'think round corners', they continue to investigate strange cases: a man who sells his soul to the Devil, an old lady who has the power to predict death through her dreams, an alien-life form that miraculously disappears and the death of an elderly hermit.

Episode One - The Curious Tale of Mr Spearfish - Life for Alice and Lenny Spearfish is just one long endurance test. With no job, no income, no prospects, every day they just seem to sink further and further down. Until one morning, drunk with despair, and as "the ultimate screw you to God and the world" Lenny finds himself signing a strange piece of paper, in blood...
Overnight, miraculously, their fortunes change. Their whole life is transformed by a sudden injection of wealth - and even more frighteningly, Lenny now appears to be able to defy death. Bullets cannot harm him, would-be assassins simply crumple to the ground in his presence. He has,to all intents and purposes, become invincible. But how can Lenny have sold his soul to Satan? As he says to himself - "I didn't believe in souls... I didn't believe in Satan." But now? He's not so sure. Of course, he can't explain any of what's happening to him. Maybe he doesn't want to...
But Alice, a God-fearing Catholic, is terrified. Terrified that one day they'll have to account for all this. In desperation she seeks the advice of her new friends Maddy and Creek, who soon find themselves being drawn into a very dangerous game indeed - with repercussions that lie far beyond the humble world of Alice and Lenny Spearfish.

Episode Two - The Eyes Of Tiresias - On the surface of things,73-year-old widow Mrs Audrey Panguitch leads a rather unremarkable life in her little cottage in the country. Living alone with just her pet goldfish for company, her favourite pastimes are listening to music and curling up with a good book about classical mythology. But her peaceful world is disrupted when her niece Heidi,who works as a location manager for a film company, comes to stay with her for a few nights. Audrey has a nightmare in which a man with a French accent is murdered. A few days later, wealthy Swiss industrialist Andre Masson is shot through the heart at his mansion home... in a manner that exactly matches the details of Audrey's dream. A ridiculous coincidence? Or is Audrey Panguitch, like the soothsayers of ancient myth and legend, able to prophesise the future? It would seem so, for two days later she is horrified to learn that another of her dreams has come frightening true...
By chance, Heidi's work introduces her to master problem-solver Jonathan Creek - though even his cynical brain is unable to account for her aunt's apparently baffling experiences. But then, as the affair suddenly takes a more threatening and sinister turn, Creek begins to see the light - and quickly realises that a tin of goldfish food may hold the key to the whole mystery.

Episode Three - The Omega Man - Professor Lance Graumann is something of a legend in his own lifetime.Widely acknowledged as the world's leading authority on extra-terrestrial phenomena, he has researched and investigated some of the most incredible case histories and sightings this century. However, even he is unprepared for the latest artefact to come into his possession - nothing less than the perfectly-preserved skeleton of an alien being, found near the town of Omega in the deserts of New Mexico. Aware that the United States authorities will "murder and maim" to keep such a controversial item under lock and key, Graumann summons reporter Maddy Magellan to a deserted warehouse in the middle of the night to unveil his exciting new acquisition. However, before the evening is out, the American military have stormed the building, seizing the skeleton and whisking it off to the nearest airbase, under armed guard. Unfortunately, the Omega Man seemingly evaporates into the night - impossibly, disappearing right in front of six United States soldiers?

Episode Four - Ghost's Forge - Maddy's former newspaper colleague , Mimi, is the super-glam girlie reporter women can't stand and men dribble all over. "A bit like a urinal," as Creek observes. And her current affair with a married man, Robin Priest, has set her thinking about an unsolved murder at a spooky old house called Ghost's Forge. Eighteen months earlier, the reclusive owner, Ezra Car r, was found murdered, with a knife in the back of his neck, his face staring horrifically out of an upstairs bedroom window. There was no apparent motive for the crime and, as the victim had hardly stepped out of his home for 20 years, no obvious candidates for the killing. There seems little prospect of a solution, but Maddy and Creek go along for the ride, as Mimi returns to the old house to investigate. And it's while they are there, foraging for clues, that something seriously impossible occurs.
Two problems then, for Jonathan Creek to unravel this time - an impenetrable murder and an inexplicable vanishing act. And what is the strange significance of the sign on the gate, and of the five copies of a book called The Grave Digger that they discover in the attic?

Episode Five - Miracle in Crooked Lane - When former Seventies sex kitten Jacqui Jordan "lifts the lid on her life and lovers" in a tabloid newspaper her salacious revelations aren't well received in the sleepy country village where she has now made her home. The conservative residents of Linnets Hill aren't used to headlines like "The night I was spanked by an Arsenal striker"... and it isn't long before their expressions of disgust cause her to reassess her lifetime of bed-hopping and promiscuity. And then one afternoon - almost as if it were divine retribution - a tragic accident occurs that leaves Jacqui in what is to prove a fatal coma, in the intensive care unit of the local hospital. Unconscious and under the constant observation of doctors and nurses, how could she possibly leave her hospital bed to be seen back in the village that evening, on her way to church?
Yet that is what happens. At seven-thirty she is sighted by an impeccable witness in Crooked Lane, flushed now with remorse and about to make her final peace with God... A ghost? An out-of-body manifestation? Or is there some rational explanation for this apparently supernatural event?
Enter a shaggy-haired figure in a duffle coat with an ingenious answer to the whole mystery... the trouble is, the figure is not Jonathan Creek, and the answer is not as ingenious as it first sounds.

Episode Six - The Three Gamblers - Even his criminal colleagues admit that Frank Gieger is "not human". Just to be in the same room with him is to sense the presence of pure evil. So even when he's been effectively disposed of - shot through the brain six times, with his head battered in - can anyone really feel safe from his demonic wrath? Certainly not Floyd Goodman and his girlfriend Karen, who having fled to the Caribbean for three months return to the scene of the crime to discover their worst fears confirmed. Like some hideous zombie of voodoo legend, Geiger's corpse appears literally to have come alive... to serve notice of vengeance upon his killers. Jonathan Creek, meanwhile, has other matters on his mind. With the National Magic Awards coming up Adam Klaus is keen to learn whether he has scooped Best Male TV Illusionist this year, and is prepared to go to almost any lengths to sway the jury in his favour.
However, when Karen button-holes Creek during his birthday night-out at an "alternative" magic club he is intrigued by the strange and gruesome tale she tells him...
Intrigued enough to set off with Maddy to the God-forsaken wilds of Frog Hollow, in the hope that a remote old farmhouse and some stray cigarette cards will yield a solution to the puzzle.

Written by David Renwick
Produced by Verity Lambert
Directed by Richard Holthouse, Keith Washington

"...a brilliantly original series from One Foot in the Grave writer, David Renwick.Davies,who made his name as a standup,
has a tremendously warmTV presence, both as an actor and a comedian, and his material about his ageing dog
was hysterical."  - Daily Mail

"Yes, the good old days of British murder are back."  - Evening Standard

"Jonathan Creek is classic television, destined to be rated right up there with Hancock's Half Hour, Fawlty Towers and
The Likely Lads. A strange and captivating combination of mystery and comedy."  - Mirror

"Absorbing, funny and hugely entertaining."  - Daily Mail

"Just keeps getting better and better."  - Canberra Times

"Classic television."  - Daily Mirror

BAFTA® Awards
1998 - Best Drama Series

Veteran BBC producer Verity Lambert also brought us Rumpole of the Bailey, Edward and Mrs. Simpson, Reilly: Ace of Spies and the first three seasons of Doctor Who.