Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Jonathan Creek

Jonathan Creek is a quirky, amusing British mystery series featuring a curly-haired geek who lives in a windmill, creates clever illusions for a famous magician (who happens to be played by the delicious actor who is Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and who gets to have a lot of fun in the first episode of JC), and is unwillingly roped into solving crimes by an irrepressible female investigative journalist named Maddy (who at least once endangers one of his inventions with her weight). The crimes are kind of incredible, but the characters are fun - especially Jonathan (at least, in the two episodes I have watched so far).

Of course, my entire experience of this show has been influenced by my immediate feeling that in some slightly different universe, Jonathan Creek is Tam's boyfriend.

Let's go to the clips to see what I mean. (I apologize for not embedding the clips, but I couldn't get it to work. But really, opening another window to see them is worth it!)

In the first episode, Jonathan and Maddy bumped into each other kind of literally at a party and later, when Maddy has found out what a smarty-pants Jonathan is and that he could be a big help to her in solving a locked-room style mystery, she invites him for lunch.

Watch segment 8:35 - 9:50 (If you're not used to YouTube, you can move the little scrolling button on the bottom of the display until it shows close to the right time.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_GP1dx3kwc

Later, Jonathan goes to visit Maddy at her place, but sees her on the stoop with her boyfriend acting flirtatious, and he gets jealous. Maddy calls him to talk about the mystery, but he has something else on his mind.

Watch segment 1:55-3:55

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Wq-8R0zNk

In the second episode, Jonathan is talking to the widow of a murdered vaudevillian comedian whom Jonathan cannot stand and takes an interest in an idiosyncratic way.

Watch segment 0:00-0:55

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrNeXpRwGZQ

I cannot get over how funny the "scientific precision" line is.

The series is available on Netflix.

7 comments:

rvman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed revisiting these scenes. The second DVD is actually on the way to our house, so I'm ready to watch now.

Sally said...

Mom, I have the second disk right now too and am hopeful the fun will continue.

Rvman, yeah, he was enjoying himself in that one too - I could handle a lot more scenes with Adam the magician in them.

Tam said...

The first one got me with the (somewhat superficial) resemblance and, more, the bluntness. It made Ed laugh too.

The second one...you'd think the honesty thing would land, but he's not righteous enough to be Ed. And not patient enough either.

OK so I am crazy...

Sally said...

Just to be clear, my sense was that I thought JC seemed more like someone who might be Tam's boyfriend than I thought he resembled Tam's actual current boyfriend Ed.

Tam said...

Ahhh. Well he does somewhat resemble my current actual boyfriend too :o)

Sally said...

Yes, no doubt the resemblance to Ed made JC a more likely candidate for Tam boyfriend-hood. :)