Satan's Chimney

A veteran actress is shot and killed while in an empty room. The bullet must have entered via the window but that's closed and undamaged. Maddy is in the US on a book tour so it looks like Jonathan will have to tackle this on his own. Luckily Carla Borrego, the agent of escape artist Alan Kalanak, is keen to help. Unfortunately she and Jonathan don't see eye to eye.

A two-hour episode of Jonathan Creek. This gives writer David Renwick room to develop characters and the plot, in theory. In practice what he then does is throw in a second murder, effectively having two episodes in one.

This said, there is more time allocated to sub-plots. The Jonathan-Carla one was interesting and has potential to become something longer term. Also good to see Julia Sawalha in the role: she's fantastic and the chemistry between her and Alan Davies is great.

The Kenny Starkiss one was amusing and is helped by him being played by the hilariously funny Bill Bailey.

On the downside, some of the extra time is just spent making things more complicated and it's not like the series needed more of that! Rather than help explain things, the longer running time just seems to make it even less understandable!

Ultimately this special episode is fine and par for the Jonathan Creek course.

Why is this sort of mindless bilge made? Terrible plot full of inconsistencies and lack of continuity, dire acting to say the least from many of the cast including the lead. I could go on, but really there is no point.

I love J Creek but this one is disturbing. It's a good story, though too long, but it has a huge fundamental error.

The castle is in Scotland. There's a flashback to 1557. There's a reference to Queen Mary persecuting protestants - and the sinister torture chamber that gives the story its name.

Queen Mary who? Mary Tudor was Queen of England at the time, and persecuting protestants (though no more than Elizabeth persecuted catholics). Scotland was a completely different country.

Do they mean Mary Queen of SCots? She was a catholic but tolerant of protestants as they were a growing power and her son was a leading protestant.

Surely someone in the entire production team could have pointed out that it didn't make historic sense? Also - one character is described as a Lutheran and then as a right wing fundamentalist. I wouldn't have thought Lutherans were particularly prone to extremism.

I am a new convert to Jonathan Creek this is like only the 4 or 5th episode I've seen and this is the best so far, and one of the most overall great mysteries I've ever seen. Sure there are plot points which have been used before but a plethora of them. Magic, closed room murder, ancient historic rituals, movie along with a set group of suspects that all seem suspiciously obvious. Yet is the murder going to be obvious or come as a complete surprise? Seriously amazing!

This feature length episode of TV Series, Jonathan Creek introduced Julia Sawalha as his new side-kick, Carla.

A murder mystery is being filmed in the Scottish Castle owned by the producer. It is a typical 'locked room' mystery in the best Agatha Christie tradition, but when the rest of the cast batter down the door, they find that the unfortunate leading lady has a real bullet hole in her breast to go with the fake one in her temple.

Needless to say, magician's assistant and amateur sleuth, Jonathan Creek is called in to investigate. Pretty soon there is another death to investigate with plenty of twists and turns before the whole truth is finally out.

A must-see for mystery fans and recommended for anyone else.