Picspam: Peter Davison & Nicola Walker in Jonathan Creek (c1998)

[thisbluespirit]

(with unexpected naked!Ancelyn, as I promised Clocket).

Naturally, possible spoilers for the S2 episodes Danse Macabre and Mother Redcap under the cut (although I have done my very best not to reveal any of the how/whodunnit aspect, I promise!):



Danse Macabre


Maddy opens the door to find Peter Davison there, dressed as a vicar. As you do...


Vicar!Peter is troubled by a Hallowe'en murder.


(It's a bit early for finding you have Peter Davison dressed as a vicar in your house.)


This is not what vicars like to read.


Also, Peter has further problems: he is married to Mrs Brittas (Pippa Haywood), "A sweet and sensitive soul," he starts to claim before Maddy rudely interupts with the liquidiser.


Maddy is convinced there is something worth investigating here.


Jonathan is not: "Not the old vanishing skeleton on Hallowe'en trick. Are you sure he's a real vicar? He's probably wearing rubber underwear or something."


Vicar!Peter can probably hear this.



Maddy: "I'm going to have a shower. If you fancy a nibble while I'm in there, help yourself..."



The usual suspects.


"I find I seem to have lost my spiritual equanimity..."



Maddy has found the vital clue to solve the why of the mystery, and now has just solved Adam Klaus's latest difficulty, and insulted him at the same time. She is smirking at Jonathan, having just pwned the world. Fair enough.



Mother Redcap


Nicola plays a WPC who is the first on the scene to an impossible murder in a locked room under police guard.. (Well, this is Jonathan Creek.)


Meanwhile, Maddy is on the phone to an estate agent called Jason Tippett Ancelyn with a creepy story & agrees to meet him. (Jonathan can't believe how dumb that is: "He could be some weirdo.")


Obviously, this is not the case...



Maddy meets Ancelyn Jason (Marcus Gilbert): "IThere wouldn't be any chance of a fork, would there?"

Meanwhile, Jonathan takes a shine to WPC Nicola:


(She likes him, too.)


... Until Maddy arrives, claims she's Jonathan's wife and drags him off home.

Still, they get a date - Nicola at Jonathan's windmill:






But, oh dear, Jonathan does NOT like the way she sticks her tongue out when she eats.


Meanwhile Maddy discover's Ancelyn Jason's hobby...


"Let's just chalk it up as nil-all on the score card and move on..."


Maddy explores the deserted pub, and Jonathan works out an old 1940's booby trap a bit too well...

...Meaning he has to quickly dive in to save Maddy becoming the first victim in about 50 years:


"I nearly killed you..."


"Is it just me, or is that an unconvincing dead rat?"


(Not that I know what a toasted dead rat should look like, but somehow... :-D)

(And, sorry, but Jonathan showing any sort of concern for Maddy, or even vice versa, is rare enough to warrant part of this picspam.)

Comments

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

With the coat and hat in the first pic, he looks like the Reverend Peter Davison, P.I. - roaming the mean streets of the naked city in pursuit of...I don't know, something vicar-related... Or something.

Hmm, 40s private eye clergyman - I'll put that on the big list of slightly odd story ideas. ;D

And, well, Bambera wouldn't let him sit around the house like that, I'm sure.

[thisbluespirit]

:-) Parishioners? A theological debate? Or an exorcism, or something, maybe...

Aha, a handy list! :-D

No. I was wondering who he was all the way through, until I saw the credits and first a light bulb went off in my head, followed by Ack!!! Aaargh! unexpected naked!Ancelyn! So, naturally I had to share it...

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

lol, yeah, that's what he looks like - the much more reasonable British version of The Exorcist! None of that silly Latin chanting and stuff - we'll just discuss it all over a nice cup of tea... ;D

Oh yes... Lists are nice.


Of course! I think Bambera would actually more likely have the problem of not being able to get Ancelyn to take his clothes off, like ever, not even for his annual bath. ;D (Actually, like most other things about the Middle Ages, personal hygiene is a hard thing to generalise about, as the existence of bath-houses in many European towns (which often doubled as houses of ill-repute as they sometimes had in Roman times) and the factoids about Vikings getting all the girls because they washed more often than the Anglo-Saxon blokes demonstrate. And knights might be more likely to be at the cleanly end of the scale. Then again, I'm pretty sure there was at least one order of monks who really did only have a bath once a year, considering that sort of carrying-on to be sinful and so forth).

And...that was in no way relevant to Peter Davison PI or naked!Ancelyn...

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, I'm sure the spectres will soon see all this melodramatic haunting is just not the thing, and go away, yes? Either that, or he'll set the Monday afternoon Ladies' Meeting on them! (The Monday afternoon Ladies' Meeting is a multi-denominational fixture, and always a tough gig. Few ghosts would survive.) :-D

I think even my brain (which is naturally prone to go to crossoverland), really failed at imagining Ancelyn as a nudist estate agent... What it did do was come up with a Jonathan Creek/X-Files crossover (have you sen The Omega Man ep? It is an interesting X-Files debunk, or parody, or something), and I'm hopeful I can try some typing up soon. It doesn't really go that far - I don't have that much brain yet - but can you imagine two people who would get on each other's nerves more than Jonathan Creek and Fox Mulder? I mean, every time he found one of his proofs, Jonathan wouldn't just be sceptical, he'd explain exactly how the scam was pulled off...

Mulder: So tell me how you explain that X...
Jonathan: Well, it seemed convincing at the start, but that was because we were looking at it from the wrong way round. Once you realised what Y had to gain, it was simple... so simple no one would ever have guessed...

:lol:

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes exactly like that! :D Nothing dramatic, though - just sensible solutions...

The one with the supposed dead alien? Yes, I think I have seen that one, although can't remember... Wasn't it frozen mercury or something, and then it melted, explaining how it "disappeared"? Or am I just making that up? Glad you got a plot bunny, though - hope it progresses well for you. And yeah, Mulder would...not appreciate it at all, I don't think. (Although on the other hand, Mulder does tend more often than not to be right about most things paranormal-related, even when he's very obviously leaping to massive conclusions on the basis of little to no evidence. I mean, even when it seems he's wrong, they always have a little twist at the end that "proves" he was right... ;D So, the annoyance might go both ways...)

I think the thing that sort of makes the notion of unexpected!Naked Ancelyn even more amusing/mind-blowing, however, is the pipe. For some reason, everything seems funnier with pipes... ;D

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, that was the one!

That's what I said - they'd get on each other's nerves. Although the mundane trumps the supernatural all the time, so Jonathan would win. ;-) Didn't even the X-Files eventually come out with the fact that half the alien stuff really was just a conspiracy to make it seem as though there were aliens when they were covering up dodgy gov't stuff? I lost track of the last few seasons, but I seem to think it had gone quite a bit that way.
(Not anything as advanced as that makes it sound; I just scribbled down a brief cross in my notebook, but I'm still not up to the concentration involved in actually typing up and editing anything at all, that's all. I think soon, though, now.)

The pipe is just... very Jonathan Creek, I think! :-D

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Glad I didn't dream it! ;D

I think there _were_ aliens (more than one faction of aliens?), but... No, I couldn't actually say what actually turned out to be "The Truth", because I'm more or less certain that Chris Carter and co were making it up as they went along. :D I sort of like to think that everything after the first film was some sort of dream of Mulder's or something... But yes, whoever's programme the crossover takes place in should probably win in that sort of scenario - it's only common courtesy ;D

Glad to hear you're getting there, though. :)

[thisbluespirit]

I'm really not sure by the end! I stopped watching after Mulder left, and then just watched the last episode to find out what had been going on all those years, but I had no ieda about anything that happened in it at all.

Aw, no - the film was probably a dream (that would explain a lot), but that would mean the depressing stuff of S5 was real, while the stuff where they suddenly got a great tongue-in-cheek sense of humour in S6 wasn't. (There was the Bermuda triangle, the Christmas ghosts, the two part body switch and other things, but I think that was the last season I had much enthusiasm for. Although I seem to remember S7 did have a ewpisode that was a bit rubbish, but did feature an amusing bit where they made a bad film of the X-Files and screen-Scully is in love with Skinner... After that, my mind is totally blank. Of course, that probably has very little to do with the X-Files.

Yeah, I just get carried away. I sit up and I think I can walk, but I think it's better that way than the reverse. :-) I hope things ar still continuing to imrpove for you.

ETA: Oh, and there was a garbage monster or something, as well. (Sorry. I bet this is showing my bad taste yet again; let me reassure you that I probably liked S3 & 4 best - although I know the most straight-up horror was in S1 & 2, but then I don't really like horror; the X-Files is absolutely as far down that line as I go. But there was a garbage-monster, wasn't there? :-D)

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yeah, you're right about S6, actually. I thought that Bermuda Triangle one was just about the greatest thing ever the first time I saw it... I think the thing was, the "funny" episodes were like great novelties and instant classics back when they were less common, but when it got so that every other episode was a funny one, it kind of diluted it a bit for me (although in the later series, the funny ones were by and large also the good ones, 'tis true). I really liked S5 at the time of first viewing, iirc - Kill Switch and Bad Blood are two of my favourite X-Files episodes of the lot (and whichever one is the one where Scully takes a weekend off to solve some small town's spate of mysterious deaths all by herself). I think the film was...strange in many respects, but probably represents a missed opportunity to wrap up the whole alien conspiracy arc and move on, instead of beating the shaggy dog into the ground as they did in the later series. Yes, the garbage monster! Weren't they, rather hilariously, also pretending to be married at the time? And the one where the camera crew were following Mulder and Scully around was good, I think. I wish I had more X-Files on DVD, actually - if I ever come into any money...

The weird thing about the X-Files for me was that I spent the first two or three seasons really digging the conspiracy-arc eps and finding the "monster of the week" eps a bit tedious, and somewhere along the way the situation reversed so that the one-offs were the good ones as far as I was concerned and the arc episodes just inspired deep apathy in me, really (apart from the two-parter with the plane crash which is imho excellent for the precise reason that it kind of ignored what had by then become the repetitive aspects of those stories).

Well, you know, don't push yourself unnecessarily - slow and steady wins the race. I'm feeling much more, I don't know, much more "it", whatever it is this past week or so. Hope things continue to improve for you too. :)

[thisbluespirit]

I have S6 on DVD, you see, because I liked the eps I'd seen but kept missing them on TV. I don't have the others - I borrowed them off someone a while ago, though and rewatched the first 3 series. Maybe S5 would have grown on me again. It seems in my head as if there was an arc of Mulder not believing in things and him and Scully not speaking that went on for weeks, but knowing how things seem when you watch them week by week, it was probably not as gloomy as I recall. :-) (It was a compost monster, I remember now. And, yes, they were and being v grumpy about it.)

I don't think that's weird - I was exactly the same about it (and I had the plane crash one on a second hand video, before I gave it to my sister, and I seem to recall that was pretty good.)

Well, I'm glad things are continuing to get a bit better for you. I am improving, but it's just kind of slow, and also because I don't feel properly ill like when you have the flu or something, I feel a bit like a fraud at the same time. (You know, if I had a hacking cough, or something in a bandage, it would all be perfectly justifiable...) Except that I really *can't* do much, or not for very long, anyway... LJ's a very handy distraction at times like these! :-D

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it'd help if it wasn't so long since I'd seen so many of the episodes, random cable repeats aside - I've got a lot on VHS, but nothing to play them on, which is as you can imagine a bit of a drawback... So, take any X-Files related opinions I may throw out with a pinch of salt. ;D

Yes, I think S5 was the point where Mulder finally became completely disillusioned in the whole alien-conspiracy thing after being double-crossed one time too many and became a bitter sceptic for a while. Ironically, just as Scully was becoming more open to the whole thing... But I don't think it lasted that long, really. I think S5 also sort of coincided with my own most intense obsession with the programme, so that might colour my opinions of it just a bit...

The plane crash one was great. Called Tempus Fugit, iirc, punnily enough. ;D

That's the thing with those sort of illnesses, though. Just don't try to do too much too soon, and look after yourself, and hopefully you will continue to improve. And yes, post things on LJ! Best wishes, anyway.

[thisbluespirit]

S2-4 were when I was at uni, watching them with my friends - after that rl interfered a lot. :-)

Thanks.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I sort of went through stages, really - big fan of the early series, sort of stopped watching it for some reason round S4 (possibly due to uni and distractions contained therein, thinking about it), got heavily back into in S5 and then...kind of trailed off in my enthusiasm as the series itself declined in the later years.

Yeah, rl - can't live with it, can't live without it... ;D

[thisbluespirit]

Yea, uni in those days - you were lucky to get to see any TV, because most of the time you didn't have much access to a telly! (Ah, doesn't it make you feel all ancient now? :lol:) The X-Files was the only thing I watched all week, because the person who owned a telly in our flat was mad for it, so five of us used to cram into her room once a week, with a law that we had to watch it in the dark. The Non-X-philes leftover did once or twice do silly things like running round to knock of the window / switch *all* the lights off to amuse themselves. If we wanted to watch a video, we needed to rent the vhs player for the night, along with the video... (Or maybe it's just me that's ancient, sorry...) So, yeah S2-4 were the ones I watched that way; S5 I had a hard time catching; it was gloomy, so was rl at the time (even last year can't compete with that year), and by S6 I was where I live now and able to pick things up, but after that, as you say, it all seemed to go down hill pretty quick. But I'm afraid, as always, I fall for the humorous things & like S6 as a whole. Except for the really dull baseball one, of course.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Aye, and all this here were fields... ;D But yes, I remember the days when somebody's mobile phone going off or if they were daft enough to walk around talking on it, it was a cause for merriment and ridicule and jokes about Yuppies that were probably a decade out of date even in those days (not that I or most of the people I knew even had them in those days)... Truly it was a different age! As for the internet... I think computers still ran on steam! ;D

But yes, baseball - one of those things that Do Not Translate Well, I fear... I liked the one with the typewriter that could warp reality (you typed stuff, and it came true), which was a later one - although I think they nicked the idea off some old Twilight Zone episode or somewhere. And speaking of nicked ideas, the Groundhog Day-clone where Mulder's waterbed kept repeatedly bursting and Our Heroes kept repeatedly getting blown up by the same bomb, I seem to remember that was a good one. You know, if I watched some of those later seasons again I'd probably start enjoying them more.

Have you seen the newish (2008?) film? Not the greatest, but maybe not as bad as people have claimed. It would have been a perfectly acceptable weird-happening-of-the-week episode around about S2, I think.

[thisbluespirit]

:-)

Oh, yes, the Groundhog Day; that's a fun one. That's got to be S6 (or possibly S7) as well, hasn't it, because Scully's puzzled by the fact Mulder even has a water bed for it to leak, which came in body-switch episode. And the typewriter one was one of those I mmissed on TV - not a bad reason to get the DVD, after all.

Yes, I saw it - it was kind of bad in the opposite way to the first one which got all excited that THIS IS A MOVIE and at least was entertainingly ridiculous and movie-ish; so they went the opposite extreme and we got what would have been a good episode stretched out forever. exactly as you say. But it was nice to see the X-Files again, Mulder and Scully having at least some sort of happy ending, and I was extremely pleased when Scully sent for Skinner. I would have rated it it v low if he had not appeared at some point.

Oh, and that reminds me of the other thing I like about S6. I'm pretty sure in the opener Mulder and Scully get told off for being in the X-Files movie as they spent too much FBI money etc. :-D

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I think that was around the point where they moved it to quite late on Saturday nights on BBC1, rather non-ideally, before they relegated it back to BBC2 for the last couple of series. LOL, yes, and Scully's like "you have a water bed?!"

Skinner was the highlight actually. And in some of the series episodes too, to be honest - Skinner was sort of the X Files equivalent of the Brig or something. I fondly remember the epic punch-up he had with "Mr X" around about S4 or so... XD

LOL yeah - something about their travel expenses wasn't it? Well, yeah, you know, going to Antarctica will do that... (And how did he manage to get to Antarctica without the baddies finding out, considering that probably only government/military flights go there? And then get back again?! Answers on a postcard, please...)

[thisbluespirit]

I do like Skinner. :-)

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he's great :)

[pedanther]

With the coat and hat in the first pic, he looks like the Reverend Peter Davison, P.I.

Not just me, then? That's good to know.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Good for me to know too, now that you mention it. ;D

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*cackles*

You know Nicola's in an episode of Law & Order: UK that's coming up soon (well, as soon as ITV pull their collective finger out of their collective rear, that is!) - it's called 'ID' and she was *really* good! (I've already seen it - twice. *coughs*)

[thisbluespirit]

:-)

What, Nicola Walker being really good in something? Never! Heh. And how come you've watched something twice if ITV haven't shown it yet? I shall have to set Jonathan Creek onto you for that sort of conundrum. ;-D

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*giggles* It's aired in Canada already...

[thisbluespirit]

...And you moved to Canada when? Heh. ;-D

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

It was a weekly flying visit late last year... LOL

[thisbluespirit]

O rly? :lol:

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Srsly! :D :D

[novindalf]

Nicola with short hair! Gosh, she looks lovely!!

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, yes she does! :-)

[john_amend_all]

I think the caption goes best on the first one:

[thisbluespirit]

LOL!

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

XD

[clocketpatch]

I was so busy being confounded by Vicar!Peter that I completely forgot about unexpected naked!Anceyln until he showed up very... unexpectly... and naked...

xD

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, Vicar!Peter was great, although they did seem to think that Vicars and their wives still act as if they're in the 50s, but even so.

I did warn you - unexpected naked!Ancelyn is unexpected! ;-D

[belantana.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOSH YESSSS! How old is she, like fourteen? I *have* to watch this show again.

[thisbluespirit]

Mid-twenties, I'd guess. :-) And, yeah, it is good. It is not quite so good without Caroline Quentin, but still a lot of fun.

[pedanther]

"Mother Redcap" is one of the few Jonathan Creek episodes I remember having watched, but I'd no idea it was Nicola Walker as the policewoman. (Well, of course, it was before she was in Spooks, so at the time she was just another actor I hadn't seen before and probably wouldn't see again.)

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, me, too actually. (I'm really unclear as to which episodes I'd seen - I started watching with the first Christmas special, and then saw part of S3, and some of the S1 repeats. What I don't quite get is how I seem to have definitely also seen some S2 eps, including Mother Redcap, but I'm sure, as Jonathan would say, there is a perfectly simple explanation for it.)

Yes, it'd have been about four years or so before she was in Spooks. You know, I knew when she arrived in Spooks I'd seen her in something before - maybe this was, or maybe there was something else as well.

[dweomeroflight.livejournal.com]

Nicola was so funny in this ep of Jonathon Creek! That tongue thing was just wtf?

[thisbluespirit]

Yes. But then Jonathan Creek is pretty great, esp S1-3. But I failed on screencapping the tongue thing. I managed to get Jonatahn's reaction to it, though. :-)

[dweomeroflight.livejournal.com]

Just stalking your Nicola tag ;)

I loved Jonathan Creek with Maddie. It just hasn't been the same since Caroline Quentin left :/

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, and why not? ;-)

I loved Jonathan Creek with Maddie. It just hasn't been the same since Caroline Quentin left :/

No, it hasn't. There's nobody like Maddy! I've enjoyed quite a bit of it, but it's not the same, and given that the competition includes Julia Sawalha and Sheridan Smith, that's really quite something.

[dweomeroflight.livejournal.com]

*Pets pretty Julia icon*

I think Maddy had a special quality/sense of humour that just gelled with Jonathan and made their relationship work. I loved them as a pairing :)