OHHHH Who Lives in a Windmill in King’s Mill, Shipley…
How can I describe Jonathan Creek to the uninitiated? Much like the crimes he investigates, the show is something of a miracle itself. If you attempted to describe it to someone elevator pitch–style, you might say, “Man who creates illusions for magicians investigates crimes.” That would be enough. But it’s so much more.
A distinctly British creation, Jonathan Creek manages to somehow balance between horrific, comedic, and mundane in a bizarre ménage à trois that one could watch forever. It’s not pornographic; it’s art. Or at least it’s the kind of teleplay smut that your weird friend calls art.
“It’s your classic Columbo plot.”
“The Eyes of Tiresias” sets itself apart from other episodes because of a single idea—returnability. The hallmark of any good piece of art is how much an observer wants to go back to it. Shows like Jonathan Creek run the risk of flaming out like a beautiful firework. You watch it go up, explode, and light up your night, but then? Sure, you can try to replay it in your mind. Or hope that next year on the Fourth of July you might catch the same explosion again, but it’s never the same. “The Eyes of Tiresias” is different though. It demands to be watched again for its heart and horror, for its tension and its release.
The main plot revolves around an elderly lady obsessed with Greek mythology. Like the soothsayers of ancient myth, she begins to have dreams that come to pass, dreams in which people die. [Note to my American friends (and given the convoluted nature of the plot I hardly think a spoiler warning is necessary but here it is): one of the prophecies has to do with wings and cars. Let’s just say when a character announces that “a car has wings,” that’s your cue to smile and nod (and look it up after the credits start rolling if you have no idea what it meant.)]
At the beginning of the episode, the old lady’s niece meets our titular hero at a fundraiser he’s attending with his partner-in-crime Maddy Magellan—she’s an investigative journalist, but honestly, it doesn’t matter because she’s awesome and sneaks into crime scenes and is surprisingly body positive for the ’90s (and in a show whose jokes haven’t always aged well, that’s something of a miracle itself). While at the gala, Jonathan and Maddy both think they’ve met potential dates, with hilarious results. The opening here is a bit of Penn & Teller meets the X-Files. It’s incredibly well sound-mixed too, but that means you might get annoyed at having a hard time hearing. That’s the point; it’ll pass. Once the dust (and noise) settles, Johnathan and Maddy try to solve the case of the clairvoyant widower before her final premonition—of her own death!—comes to pass.
Come for the Illusion, Stay for the Magic
You’re not going to find anything like this on television now, maybe ever again. Not all of the episodes are great. Some of them I’m even leery of returning to. But the ones that are great, well, they’re the ones that are going to make you blink after and ask, “How’d they do that?”
Jonathan Creek is the kind of show that makes you believe in the medium of television, and “The Eyes of Tiresias” is the kind of (perfect) episode that will dazzle you with its absurd brilliance.
D. M. Dunn (he/him) currently works as a publishing director in Bloomington, Indiana. You can find his most recent work at gravel magazine, Drunk Monkeys, and Button Eye Review. His biggest literary claim to fame is a 2012 Dishonorable Mention in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, though he's pretty proud of his 'Sonnets from the Erodian #1' in the YF/YF anthology, which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.