Jonathan Creek: Seasons 1 & 2 Savings Set

Season 1

Meet the magician with the trick of solving impossible crimes. Jonathan and Maddy investigate crimes which seem to have no rational explanation. Jonathan Creek is a bit of a nerd, but he is also a bit of a quick-witted genius. Maddy Magellan is an investigative crime writer, and the pair join forces to unravel a series of mysteries.

Among their many adventures, Jonathan and Maddy encounter the powers of voodoo and dream-predictions, and cases involving strange disappearances, an alien life-form and tricks of time...

Season 2

The crime-solving odd couple is back! Jonathan (Alan Davies, QI, The Brief)— windmill-dwelling, frizzy-headed, tennis-shoed magic expert and amateur sleuth extraordinaire—and investigative journalist Maddy Magellan (Caroline Quentin, Blue Murder, Men Behaving Badly) solve six more mysteries by fusing hard evidence with inspiration and intellect. In Season 2, killers appear to evaporate in a puff of smoke, make time stand still and escape like ghosts. See if you can solve the illusions in this BAFTA® Awardwinning series.

Season 1

The Wrestler's Tomb - Contemporary expressionist painter Hedley Shale is found murdered with two bullets in his chest in the upstairs bedroom at his South London home, eccentrically named The Wrestler'sTomb. Lying nearby is his secret lover, French model Francesca Boutron - bound and gagged by the black-hooded intruder who shot the artist at point-blank range and then escaped through the back garden.

Shale's wife, Serena, steely editor of a national women's magazine, would, by all laws of logic, appear to be the killer.

But she was at work throughout the morning on her side of town. Her PA watched her office at 9:30 and then remained outside the door for the next three hours.For Serena Shale to have left the room by any other means was quite simply a physical impossibility. So how could she have committed the crime?

With time-honoured efficiency, detectives snap into action and arrest the wrong man - prompting Maddy Magellan to begin an investigation that will hopefully prevent a gross miscarriage of justice. But how can Serena Shale's apparently impregnable alibi be broken?

Enter Jonathan Creek - outwardly taciturn and cynical, he is twilight to Maddy's daylight, his brooding intensity often at odds with her impetuous zeal.Yet, together, they become drawn ever deeper into the impossible puzzle of Hedley Shale's murder; a puzzle to which the solution proves far more bizarre and chilling than they could ever have imagined.

Jack in the Box - Former film star Jack Holiday was a lot of laughs in the ‘50s,‘60s and ‘70s. But times - and comedy - have moved on.

Today, the only outlet for his slapstick skills is a TV commercial for bananas. Or is it? Could that really be 65-year-old Jack on screen executing those pratfalls, when his body and hands are apparently now crippled with arthritis? More to the point, when he is discovered dead in a locked nuclear bunker with a gun beside his head, surely it would have been impossible for him to have pulled the trigger? An ingenious murder, then. But how did the killer leave the concrete shelter, located 30ft underground inside a rock-face of solid granite, through a steel-plated door that could only have been locked form the inside?

Once again, crime writer Maddy Magellan enlists the services of magical associate Jonathan Creek to unravel a seemingly impenetrable mystery.

The Reconstituted Corpse - At 43, Zola Zbzewski has the sort of looks many women can only dream of. For the past 10 years, she has spent many thousands of pounds on an intensive course of facelifts, implants,tucks, bobs and dermabrasions to transform herself. For many years, the man who performed all these operations, cosmetic surgeon David Curchin, also shared her bed.But he has now been cast aside in favour of a younger model - a hunky, Swedish swimming instructor named Rudi.

Curchin vows to destroy her when Zola decides to go public with an account of their relationship, but it is Curchin who is destroyed and brutally murdered at his Harley Street clinic in the middle of the night. Zola becomes an immediate suspect, as no-one else has a stronger motive to kill him. Fortunately, investigative journalist Maddy Magellan is soon on top of the case, uncovering startling new evidence to blow the charges away.

But the unexpected and totally impossible happens,and there is only one man to whom they can turn to shed light on the baffling affair.

No Trace of Tracy - Roy Pilgrim is a living legend. Former lead singer and electric violinist with the rock band Edwin Drood, he is still idolised by female fans the world over. But when one of them,16-year-old Tracey Cook,turns up at his country house to meet the great man and apparently vanishes into thin air, the police are clear ly faced with a problem.

Was she, in fact, abducted... or worse? Is she even still alive? Or has a fate too grisly for words befallen her - a fate for which pop icon Pilgrim would almost certainly appear to be responsible? Once again,the winning team of crime writer Maddy Magellan and magical associate Jonathan Creek is drawn into another totally impossible problem. It's one that takes them deep into the murky world of rock and roll - and even murkier goings-on in the nearby woods.

The House of Monkeys - When nationally renowned doctor and cancer researcher Elliot Strange is discovered dead inside a locked room,impaled on a 12th-century Samurai blade, the authorities are understandably baffled. Since nobody could possibly have got into the study and nobody could have got out - and the other occupants in the house at the time of the murder were a dozen pet monkeys - perhaps Dr Strange did, indeed,somehow engineer his own suicide. But why? And why was he heard, seconds before his death, screaming in mortal terror - like a man possessed?
Within hours of the crime, Elliot's wife, Ingrid, has summoned family friend Jonathan Creek to the scene, in the hope that his lateral brain will bring reason to the whole bizarre affair. But the closer he and Maddy are drawn to the problem, the more impossible becomes the solution.When dusk descends, and they find themselves spending the night in this dark house of mysteries, the night begins.

Season 2

Danse Macabre - Best-selling author Emma Lazarus, popularly known as "The Queen Of Horror", has been shot through the heart at the Cotswolds home of her daughter, Lorna Claithorne. But the date is October 31 - Halloween - and this is no ordinary murder. Inexplicably, the mystery killer has apparently evaporated like a puff of smoke, right in front of everyone's eyes. In the words of Lorna's husband, The Reverend Stephen Claithorne: "Some miracles you don't want to believe in."

Time Waits for Norman - Businessman Norman Stangerson is a temporophobic, unable to relax whenever there is a watch or a clock ticking near him, reminding him that, with every second that passes his life is slowly ebbing away. This little eccentricity apart, his life appears to be running smoothly. After the collapse of his partnership a few years ago, he has landed a lucrative job commuting across the Atlantic and his mar riage to his glamorous publisher wife Antonia could not be happier.

The Scented Room - When a £1m painting is cut from its frame and stolen by an "invisible" thief, Jonathan Creek seizes the chance to launch a personal vendetta against its owner.
Theatre critic Sylvester Le Fley - loathed the length and breadth of Shaftesbur y Avenue - has just had a priceless art treasure stolen from his country retreat, Cicada Park. El Greco's Kiss Of Judas - the pride of his collection - has impossibly vanished from an empty, air-tight room... spirited away by an unseen intruder who appears to have been able to walk through walls. A classic problem, then, for illusionist's consultant Jonathan Creek and one that doesn't appear to tax his deductive powers for more than a few minutes.

The Problem at Gallows Gate (Part One) - Creek and Maddy face another impossible murder mystery when Adam Klaus'sister witnesses a young woman being strangled in the window of a country cottage in the woods.
A visit to the UK by legendary jazz trumpeter "Blind" Hewie Harper is a rare treat indeed and his itinerary will naturally include a call on his good friend, master magician Adam Klaus. A night of hell-raising with the "Rat-Pack" is in prospect and, with luck, the King Of Cool will even be persuaded to guest-star on Klaus' forthcoming TV special. But there is a problem. Klaus' decidedly uncool sister Kitty, from Dumfries, has descended on the house like a Plague of Egypt, threatening to scupper her brother's plans and reduce him to a quivering wreck. As ever, creative consultant Jonathan Creek is given the job of damage limitation, and Kitty is duly removed from the premises for the night, to join Maddy and Creek on a Badger Watch organised by the local natural history society.

The Problem at Gallows Gate (Part Two) - How was a beautiful young woman murdered by a man who had himself committed suicide a few weeks earlier?
After a long, intimidating night being grilled by detectives at the local constabulary, Jonathan Creek and Maddy take stock of the bizarre and fairly baffling facts in the case before them. Three weeks after wealthy socialite Duncan Proctor hurled himself to his death at his ancestral home in Northumberland, he was apparently seen, by Adam Klaus' sister Kitty, strangling animator Felicity Vale in the window of her country cottage in Gallows Gate. When Maddy and Creek arrived to find her body lying in the bath, the house was locked from the inside, and there were several tantalising pieces of evidence.

Mother Redcap - How was a High Court judge stabbed to death in his own bed in a room nobody could possibly have entered or left?
As a trial of leading Chinese gangsters nears its close, a major security operation is under way at the home of the presiding judge, Forest Sweetland. On the eve of sentencing, a death threat has been received from the defendants' associates, declaring the judge will be dead by the morning.

BAFTA® Awards
1998 - Best Drama Series

"...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