At long last, BBC America has returned Jonathan Creek to their programming lineup. Last spring I discovered this quirky mystery series about a magician’s illusionist played by Alan Davies who solved locked room mysteries as a hobby, but BBC America insisted on showing only the first season’s episodes with an occasional episode from the second or third seasons. Thankfully over the next few weeks they will be showing the second season, of which I’ve seen only one episode.
My first encounter with Jonathan Creek actually came in a Doctor Who charity fanthology, Walking In Eternity. Michael Collins, the cover artist for Pocket Books’ Starfleet Corps of Engineers eBooks, wrote a short story entitled “Hall of Me” in which the Fourth Doctor (from the alternate future of “The Dark Dimension”) meets alternate versions of himself–Jessica B. Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote and Jonathan Creek, who in this story was an alternate version of the Eighth Doctor as played by Paul McGann. Other Doctor Who links can be found–Colin Baker guest stars (as the murder victim!) in “The Wrestler’s Tomb,” the first episode, and Maureen O’Brien, who played Vicki during the William Hartnell era, guests in “Jack in the Box,” the series’ third episode. Verity Lambert, Doctor Who‘s first producer, served as a producer on the series in its later seasons. Also, Alan Davies was a rumored choice for the Ninth Doctor in “Curse of the Fatal Death.”
I would love to live in a windmill. Jonathan Creek does.