A strange way to start the year

[fpb]

Tonight's Jonathan Creek special, which I have just finished watching, is quite the most bitter piece of writing I have come across in quite a while. Not only is the method of murder enough to give anyone nightmares, not only do several complete innocents get murdered by it (one of them being the character whose disappearance started the investigation - and I hate to see mysteriously vanished friends turn up dead), not only is the climax of the story a terrible scene in which a likeable secondary character turns out to have been the accomplice of one of the murderers and to have been betrayed and nearly murdered (and then has to face up to what she has done), but the ending is completely and crushingly negative - two characters have their aspirations crushed, in a viciously humorous manner that leaves nothing better than a very sad smile on everyone's faces. Don't get me wrong, it is a fine piece of TV. But it is an oddly embittered and hopeless vision to start the year with.

Comments

[lazy-neutrino.livejournal.com]

I thought it rambled a bit, actually, as if they were trying to fit 90 minutes of TV into a 2 hour slot. Not as much plotty detail as in earlier Creeks. However, the bath bit was easily the best bit of real horror I've even seen on the programme: I thought that was excellent.

Interesting to see one of the characters called Jacques Futrelle, which is the name of a golden age detective writer. I haven't read all his work, but I wonder if they lifted one of his ideas?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I agree about the rambling - the whole subplot about the shallow friend who thought he had landed a big-breasted lay was quite unnecessary - but I also thought that that was placed there out of bitterness. The real contribution it makes to the story is the bitter humour at at the end, with the invalid contract. The one big flaw to me was that the girl, after moving mountains to find her vanished friend, did not show enough signs of being devastated at finding what had happened to her - and finding, for that matter, in such a personal way. I thought that spoiled the story, and again it indicates that the writer really badly wanted to put in that final scene at the restaurant - and that, again, supports what I mean about bitterness being the dominant note of this story.

(A very minor quibble. The "Felix dies" item makes a very good riddle indeed, but anyone who handled Latin as naturally as that would have been likelier to write "dies felix".)

Thanks for telling me about Jacques Futrelle. The name did sound familiar, but I might not have been motivated enough to go and find out on my own.