Jonathan Creek: The Grinning Man (2009)

Jonathan Creek: The Grinning Man (2009)

Dir. David Renwick | Approx 118 minutes

A feature-length adventure (of two whole hours!) that saw the wooly-haired sleuth return to our TV screens after a lengthy five-year absence.

It's written and directed by series creator David Renwick, so the quality is high. The only dip is with the inclusion of an entirely superfluous subplot featuring magician Adam Klaus. I mean no disrespect to actor Stuart Milligan, but it goes nowhere interesting and serves no purpose other than to give the character something to do; its removal would've strengthened the pace of the main plot considerably.

When last we saw JC he was being tormented by Carla Borrego (Julia Sawalha), but she's moved on to graze in pastures new. What is it with the women of the series? They never stick around for long enough.

Filling Carla's role is Joey Ross, played by Sheridan Smith. Joey performs the same function as the women that came before, which won't surprise anyone, but Sheridan's gung-ho attitude and willingness to get her feet dirty enables the viewer to envision her as having a very different background than Maddie or Carla.

The case involves a sealed attic room in which someone disappeared without a trace over seventy years prior, in 1938. The room's secrets remained hidden all those years, as did the motivations of the designer, but that's only because JC hadn't been around then to poke his punctilious nose into dusty corners and tempt fate with his trickster's intuition. He may have been superseded by a younger demographic with less duffel in their wardrobe, but he can out-think the best of them.