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UP THE CREEK?
Alan Davies promises that the first Jonathan Creek whodunnit in three years is the spookiest yet – and hints it could be the last
Enjoy the new Jonathan Creek whodunnit, says Alan Davies, it’s the spookiest yet – and it might well be the last
The clues are coming thick and fast today on the set of Daemons’ Roost, the first Jonathan Creek episode in almost three years. But they’re nothing to do with the plot, more hints about whether we’ll ever see the brilliantly eccentric sleuth on TV again. Warwick Davis is chatting away about his role as an eccentric vicar in the new feature-length film when he suddenly says, ‘It’s sad to think this will be the last one.’
What? Can this really be the end of the show after 20 years? ‘Well, never say never, but it seems like, you know…’ adds Warwick, his voice tailing off and a look of anxiety passing across his face as he fears he might have said too much. ‘Mind you, I can see my character Wendell Wilkie having a spin-off, going into sleuthing himself,’ he continues, subtly changing the subject. ‘Nothing too demanding: the gardener loses his fork, and Wendell tries to find it, that sort of thing. Wouldn’t that be fun?’
Alan Davies, who’s played Creek since the show’s inception and is here with Warwick at spooky Hunterston House in Ayrshire where Daemons’ Roost is being filmed, steps in to make light of suggestions he might be hanging up his character’s legendary duffle coat. ‘That’s the writer David Renwick’s call,’ says Alan, 50. ‘There are days, especially the 12-hour filming days when it’s been raining non-stop, when I try to talk David out of writing any more. I say, “After 20 years, haven’t you written enough?” But he’s in rude health, he’s 65, and he’s written possibly his best ever Jonathan Creek in Daemons’ Roost. So there’s always a danger I might get another call.’
Should this prove to be the last episode for the character that turned Alan from a moderately well- known comedian into a household name in 1997, it’s certainly a memorable one. For a start there’s Daemons’ Roost itself, a spooky old mansion where a ghostly woman is seen at a bedroom window appearing to scream and spectres fly from a coffin in an adjacent graveyard.
The story is that the pile was once the home of a sadistic 19th- century sorcerer called Jacob Surtees, who had some very nefarious tendencies. It’s now owned by Nathan Clore, a former horror movie director who’s very ill and wants to impart the house’s secrets to his stepdaughter Alison before he breathes his last. Clore was responsible for such classics as Brides Of The Damned, Drink The Blood Of The Undead and Horrors Of The Inquisition, and the show’s art department have excelled themselves by producing posters for these fictional movies that hang on the wall to provide a chilling backcloth to events taking place there.
And on top of all this, there’s a guntoting madman on the loose, determined to get even with Creek after the detective helped put him behind bars years before. Warwick provides light relief during the 90-minute special, his vicar character carrying out a hilarious séance and getting under the feet of his idol Creek as the sleuth attempts to discover the secrets of Daemons’ Roost before the body count mounts.
‘It’s a really scary episode in which Creek and his wife Polly [played by Sarah Alexander] face genuine peril,’ explains Alan. ‘Am I in any danger myself from any of the work I’m having to do? Well, I can’t help noticing the producers have put one particularly perilous scene for Creek right at the end of the shoot, in the torture chamber at Daemons’ Roost where other characters have met their maker. Might I be about to meet mine as well?’
At least Alan’s able to laugh about his time on the show now – in 2014 he had a real moan about it, saying: ‘They paid me less for the last series than in the late 1990s. And the filming schedules – 12-hour days, six-day weeks – are not very family-friendly. You leave home at 6am and don’t get back until after the children are tucked up in bed.’
Presumably somebody at the BBC was listening. The schedule on Daemons’ Roost is more relaxed, allowing its star to spend weekends with his family – his wife of nine years, Katie Maskell, daughter Susie, seven, and sons Bobby, five, and Francis, one – at their cottage in Northumberland. ‘I even had an unprecedented six days off, which allowed me to get to the Edinburgh Festival,’ beams Alan. ‘And we’re doing five-day rather than sixday weeks, which makes a huge difference. It’s almost human! Francis has just turned one so I’m delighted I don’t have to leave him for too long.’
Alan paints a picture of happy if chaotic family life. ‘Francis is very nice
but very loud,’ he says. ‘Maybe with two older siblings he feels he needs to be. He’s preoccupied with Bobby, who he calls “Babba”. Bobby just ignores him – he’s far too busy doing something else.’
Children and marriage were on the distant horizon when Alan started playing Creek in 1997. Caroline Quentin played his sidekick Maddy Magellan in the early series and Alan then dated his costar Julia Sawalha, who played Creek’s second companion Carla Borrego. Sheridan Smith was a later partner in solving crime.
The show, which has now chalked up 32 episodes, has also featured some of Alan’s fellow comedians, including Bob Monkhouse, Jack Dee and Griff Rhys Jones. But it seems it was Rik Mayall, who died aged just 56 in 2014, who made Alan laugh most.
‘I’ve got a video of Rik on my phone going around on the motorised wheelchair of his character DI Gideon Pryke in the second Creek film he shot, in 2013,’ chuckles Alan. ‘It was absolute carnage, this vehicle Rik appeared to have no control over was running into people wherever he attempted to steer it. He had this wonderful sly look on his face, well aware he was causing mayhem and loving every minute of it. That video is one of the most treasured possessions I have. I miss Rik, I’d like to have worked with him again. He was a hugely entertaining man.’
Time will tell if fans have cause to miss Jonathan Creek. As another of the horror movie posters on the wall of Daemons’ Roost states, The Yeti Lives. The question is, will Jonathan?