"The Grinning Man" is a feature-length and the twenty-sixth episode of the BBC crime drama series Jonathan Creek, first broadcast on 1 January 2009. The episode marked the series' return to television following a five-year hiatus and saw the return of Alan Davies as the show's titular sleuth. Stuart Milligan returned to the series as Jonathan's boss, magician Adam Klaus, while the episode also introduced Sheridan Smith as Joey Ross, Jonathan's crime-solving assistant. The episode was written and directed by series creator David Renwick, who chose to revive the show as a means of delaying his retirement.
The central mysteries of the episode focused on an attic room whose occupants disappeared without trace overnight and the kidnapped partner of a stage magician.
The episode was watched by 9.91 million viewersWeekly Viewing Summary. See week ending 4 Jan 2009. BARB. and attained a 36% audience share. Critical reaction to the episode from The Scotsman's Paul Whitelaw and The Northern Echo's Steve Pratt suggested that, at 120 minutes, the plot was overstretched. The Stage's Mark Wright compared Smith favourably to her predecessor in the assistant role, Julia Sawalha as Carla Borrego, while both Scotland on Sunday's Chitra Ramaswamy and Sian Brewis for the Leicester Mercury discussed the nostalgia invoked by the episode, as a result of the series having been off-air since 2004.
Plot Set five years after the previous episode, "Gorgons Wood", "The Grinning Man" begins by introducing the Gothic mansion Metropolis. Since 1938, a number of visitors staying overnight in the mansion's attic "Nightmare Room" have disappeared without a trace. Originally owned by a spiritualist, the mansion is now the property of his grandson, stage magician Lance Gessler (Nicholas Boulton). Gessler lives with his mother, Constance (Judy Parfitt), his partner Elodie (Jenna Harrison) and their groundskeeper, Glenn (Ciarán McMenamin). They offer shelter to paranormal investigator Joey Ross and her friend Mina (Naomi Bentley) when the two are caught in a storm. Mina elects to sleep in the Nightmare Room and has vanished by morning. Constance calls in sleuth Jonathan Creek to investigate Mina's disappearance.
Jonathan has recently begun a relationship with an old acquaintance, Nicola (Katherine Parkinson), who is opposed to his investigative career, believing it to be too dangerous an occupation. Jonathan is still in the employment of the magician Adam Klaus, whose television series is receiving heavy criticism from viewers. To Jonathan's bemusement, Klaus invests in the 3D pornography industry and begins dating the porn actress Candy Mountains (Jemma Walker). Jonathan inspects the attic room and the bedroom directly beneath it, but finds nothing suspicious, save for a small vent in the canopy of the room's four-poster bed, which is opened when pressure is put on the mattress, releasing dead flies.
Investigating events at Metropolis, Jonathan deduces that Gessler's grandfather was a Nazi sympathiser, who laid a trap in the attic room to kill one of his enemies without arousing suspicion, which has subsequently killed anyone else who stayed in that room. Jonathan and Joey spend the night in the room, but uncover nothing. The next morning, when trying to figure out what they had done differently to all the victims, Jonathan comes to the realisation that they would have all taken a bath in the adjoining bathroom. Upon realising the secret behind the disappearances, Jonathan races back up to the attic with Glenn. Unfortunately, Joey had already climbed into the bath, which has descended and released her into a water tank below the room, where the corpses of previous victims (including her friend Mina) remain, drowned and decomposing. The bath has not yet returned to its position so Jonathan and Glenn are able to rescue her. Confronting Constance, Jonathan explains that the room the disappearances occurred in was not the real attic room, but in fact located in a flat-roofed tower next to the real attic which had slanted ceilings built in to disguise it as the attic in order to stop people suspecting any traps beneath it. The vent in the canopy was designed to leak an ectoplasmic fluid on the first victim to ensure they would use the bath.The mystery resembles the real-life case of the Jarmans, the sixteenth-century owners of the Ostrich Inn in Slough (Berkshire), who killed wealthy travellers by tipping them into a barrel of boiling water via a hinged bed in one of the bedrooms.
During the investigation, Gessler's partner, Elodie, is kidnapped. Joey follows Gessler from his stage show one night and observes him slashing Elodie's throat. She, Jonathan and Nicola later discover Elodie's dead body, but when they return with policemen, the corpse has been switched for a prop dummy. Glenn reveals that he and Elodie were in love and had recently married in secret. He suspects that Gessler may have murdered Elodie out of jealousy after she confessed their marriage to him. The police, however, receive a video of Elodie walking through a park the morning after she was supposedly murdered, with the day's newspaper in plain view for validation. Jonathan realizes that Gessler had manipulated Delia Gunning (Julia Ford), the editor of the local newspaper, into printing a fake copy a week in advance. By making the video before killing Elodie, he could deflect suspicion from himself, leading the police to believe that she had faked her own death and run away. Gessler ensured the front page's authenticity by having Delia create the day's headline herself, releasing a briefcase full of bees in the middle of a local council meeting. Jonathan's suspicions became aroused as the following story about the construction of a motorway through six villages would have been far more engaging as a front-pager. Jonathan and Joey arrive at Delia's home just in time to save her from being murdered by Gessler, who later kills himself by gassing himself in his car.
The "Grinning Man" of the title is the subject of a painting, reputedly by Hieronymous Bosch, which hangs in the attic Nightmare Room. Once the episode's mysteries are resolved, Constance confesses that she rescued the painting from a burning room decades previously, leaving an elderly uncle to die as she did so. She has Glenn assist her in burning the painting in Metropolis' grounds. The episode ends with Jonathan, Joey and Adam arriving at a restaurant to celebrate with their significant others. Adam discovers that he has been conned by Candy and will not be receiving any return on his pornography investment. Joey receives a call from her partner, Alec (Adam James), who reveals that he is in Miami with Nicola and the two are now seeing one another. As the maître d' (Graham Vanas) arrives to lead them to their private booth, Jonathan jests; "Three for the Nightmare Room".
Production
David Renwick made the decision to revive Jonathan Creek for a Christmas special as a means of "deferring retirement". He considered the alternative of developing an entirely new series to be too lengthy a process, and regarded reviving Jonathan Creek as the "safe decision". He described the process of formulating a plot for the episode as an "agony" and a "torment", revealing that he had stopped writing the show in 2004 partly due to a lack of ideas. Renwick explained: "Inevitably, you set up a series which is all about impossibilities that then have to have a rational explanation, by definition it’s going to be pretty challenging stuff for a writer. So God knows why I ever embarked on it in the first place." As well as writing, Renwick also directed the episode, which was produced by Nerys Evans; Jonathan Creek's former producer Verity Lambert died of cancer in November 2007. Davies noted that he and Renwick met quite regularly following Lambert's death, and when Renwick suggested to the BBC that they revive Jonathan Creek, the broadcaster "bit his hand off for it". "The Grinning Man" was commissioned by Jane Tranter, Controller of BBC Fiction, with Lucy Lumsden, Controller of Comedy Commissioning, stating that the station was "delighted to have Jonathan Creek back on BBC One". Renwick was prepared for a negative reaction to the show's revival, describing how: "People say, Oh Jonathan Creek's coming back. Fantastic.' And then they watch it and go: 'God, what a mistake.' Which is what happened with One Foot in the Grave. So I tend to expect the worst."
Davies had suspected that Renwick would one day revive Jonathan Creek, explaining that Jonathan's fate had been left open, unlike Renwick's other famous character - One Foot In The Grave's Victor Meldrew, who was killed in a hit and run in the show's last episode. When the production of "The Grinning Man" was announced in June 2008, Davies commented: "For the last five years whenever I've passed a locked room I've thought there might be a mystery lurking behind it, so I'm very happy to return to Jonathan Creek and to have something to actually solve." He stated that reprising the role after such a lengthy hiatus was initially strange, and that: "I couldn't remember my lines on the first day. I'd sort of forgotten how precise you have to be when you work on a Jonathan Creek episode." He praised co-star Sheridan Smith in comparison, describing how: "Sheridan is extremely good at all that stuff, which works in a similar way to the script, in that she's a very bright, sharp character and Creek's a bit rusty and hasn't really been doing it for a while. So sure enough, on the first day, she knows all her lines and makes her mark. And I'm going, 'Hang on a minute, stop showing off'". Upon receiving the episode's script, Davies had gained a stone in weight since last playing Jonathan Creek, almost five years previously. Renwick suggested that they include Davies' weight gain in the plot, presenting the character as having "gone to seed". Davies, however, did not want to play a "fat Creek", and lost weight before filming began, stating: "it was my choice not to let him go too much". The actor discussed with Renwick how Jonathan may have developed in the intervening five years: "We talked about whether he’d have changed, whether he’d have done any investigating in the meantime. He probably didn’t. He still does the same job and is locked in the same relationship with Klaus and feeling a bit put upon – that hasn’t changed at all... and he still lives in a windmill". In a change from the original, Cobstone Windmill was used for the exterior shots, replacing Shipley Windmill, which had been used for all other episodes. Davies grew his hair out again for the role, and wore his own duffel coat throughout the episode. The coat had become the character's trademark in the show's first series, with Davies explaining that: "After we did the first series, I could never wear it off screen again, because people started doing the Danse Macabre [theme] music everywhere I went. So it's just been in the wardrobe for 12 years."