Jonathan Creek rewatch: series 1 ep 4: No Trace of Tracey

[cloudsinvenice]

 Slightly odd start to this episode - we see 80s rock star Roy Pilgrim on a fan's telly, intercut with his present-day self out jogging. The fan is on her way to have tea with him at Roy's invitation, and Roy is on his way home to discover signs of a break-in, get hit over the head with a weight and be handcuffed to a radiator for twenty hours. It's unfortunate that the sequel to this is the disappearance of the girl, since the police aren't quite buying Roy's alibi...

Maddy and Jonathan, meanwhile, are on a scavenger hunt, with Maddy's best friend Sheena and Sheena's boyfriend, a bodybuilder who is sitting in the back of the car providing visual contrast with our hero. Jonathan has a complaint: 

"Er, Greg, if you're planning to open your legs any wider, let me know and I'll get out of the car."

(R: I can see his bulge! Me: Imagine what Jonathan can see...)

You can't blame Jonathan for being irritated, though. In light of his skill at lateral thinking, he's banned from solving any clues: until Maddy and Sheena get REALLY stuck, that is.

Taking a break in a beer garden, the group are spectators at a row between Roy and his fiancee, who lives nearby and can't quite believe that Roy's connection with a disappearing teenage girl is coincidence. Jonathan gets all starstruck, because naturally he recognises Roy from "seminal" 70s/80s prog rock band, Edwin Drood. Maddy and Sheena were more into Percy Sledge, so this revelation doesn't go down well. You can tell that Jonathan can't stand Sheena's company - and that she's probably spent the entire afternoon asking when he's going to pull his rabbit out of a hat... it's bound to be something of a relief when he and Maddy get involved in the Pilgrim mystery. 

Maddy worms her way into a conference with Roy and the police at Pilgrim Towers, apparently by arriving with the police and then nodding grimly at all concerned - they're well into their discussion by the time the police realise she's not Roy's legal counsel, and Roy realises she's not one of them. Strangely, it's not her complete incompetence at opening a carton of Ribena that gives her away. 

They burn her notes and kick her out, but she returns with her ace in the hole duffel coat. "We're the only hope you've got," Maddy tells Roy - quoting the A-Team, as R informs me. Roy lets them in, and Jonathan stands around going, "The White Room! I'm actually in the White Room!" and correcting Roy on the minutiae of his own anecdotes. Fanboy. :P Actually I find it sort of endearing.

I have absolutely no words for the scene at the Flowers farm, the hotbed of a cult which Roy Pilgrim has been financially supporting - until recently, anyway. Apart from the spectacle of a group of hippies dry-humping trees, there's the giant cut-out of an ark the production team want us to think the hippies are building in the woods. DVD-quality images: the scourge of aging visual effects. Just ask those liquid metal bullet holes in Terminator 2: Judgment Day....

And here we must draw a veil over what transpires, except to say that the reveal is fucking ingenious.