Jonathan Creek: The Judas Tree (2010)

The Judas Tree had Jonathan's spirited opposite, Joey Ross, return for another of the feature-length outings that kept the series sporadically alive for years after the regular weekly format ended. The unlikely duo investigate a macabre mystery involving a ghostly apparition and an unexplained death.

The Adam Klaus character is again shoehorned into the story, but it's less forced this time. However, I did get the feeling more than once that David Renwick was overcompensating for something by filling the story with multiple twists and turns, some of which ask the viewer to make some sizeable leaps of faith and logic. Perhaps the BBC's decision to chop the budget had him worried. To his credit, he managed to not let that aspect visibly weaken the production, and it looks just as good as what he delivered previously.

It employs some clichéd horror movie techniques that I wasn't enamoured with; it's effective in creating atmosphere, sure, but dragging an intellectual drama like Jonathan Creek down to that kind of level cheapened the experience for me.

It excels in other ways, though: the comedy is timely; both Alan Davies and Sheridan Smith play their roles well, with the relationship between them clearly defined and unlikely to be misunderstood; and at one stage it even exposes and draws attention to its own workings, which is a brave thing to do.

Running Time: 94 minutes.

3½ drawing boards out of 5