JONATHAN CREEK

On December 20, Jonathan Creek kicks off at 20h00 on BBC Entertainment (channel 120 on DStv) with The Judas Tree. The master of illusion and lateral thinker is back in another spooky tale as he returns to explain a series of baffling disappearances in a ‘haunted’ room at the top of a grand gothic house. Can he once again render the impossible possible?

At midnight on Midsummer’s Day 1938, a famous Harvard geneticist, Eli Mencken, accepts a challenge to spend the night inside a gloomy old attic room where the ghost of a madman is said to prey upon human flesh. The next morning, he has vanished - the only clue to his disappearance being a trail of grisly ectoplasm on the bed. Seventy years on, the strange, unexplained events in the so-called ‘Nightmare Room’ of the gothic house now known as ‘Metropolis’ continue. When two young women take shelter there one night from a raging thunderstorm, it’s not long before the ominous ‘presence’ claims another victim.

In the next episode, Jonathan Creek finds himself in a race against time to clear a young girl’s name when she is framed for a murder most mysterious. He is called upon by his friend and sceptic Joey to investigate a series of spooky events concerning a young housekeeper called Emily. Emily has only recently started working for the owners of Green Lanterns – the famous mystery author Hugo Doré and his wife, Harriet. But her new role comes with a house that has its own fair share of history and mystery. As Creek and Joey investigate, things take a turn for the worse when a piercing scream is heard in the garden and Harriet is seen falling from a window. But who pushed her and why? When Emily is arrested, she swears she didn’t commit the murder.

The series stars Alan Davies as Jonathan Creek with Sheridan Smith, Stuart Milligan; Ciaran McMenamin, Nicholas Boulton, Paul McGann and Sasha Behar. The episodes will be screened on December 20 at 20h00 on BBC Entertainment (channel 120 on DStv)