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Jonathan Creek Revisted

 Having watched the last episode of The Capture, I was looking for something equally intriguing but not as frightening. I decided to re-watch the old episodes of Jonathan Creek.

Like everyone else, I have my favourite episodes and they are enhanced by the actors and settings. The series had the ability to draw one in and make everything seem possible, if unlikely.

However, the re-watching exercise only reinforced my view that Maddy Magellan was possibly the most irritating character who has been on television in more than a generation. I can throw the usual abuse at her, but her most egregious sins are that she is irredeemably selfish and, throughout the series, she never learns anything. She appears in 18 episodes and is as stupid in the last as she was in the first.

Her selfishness not infrequently crosses the line from being mildly amusing to downright mean. For all of her emancipated liberalism, she is an objectionable human being (I leave it others to decide whether that is cause or effect). The pinnacle of her meanness is when she lies to Jonathan about his lost love, Charlotte Carney, in The Black Canary. The poor bloke has a real chance at love and happiness only to be thwarted by the whining harpy who never shuts up.

It strains credulity that someone who has no perception nor logic - not to mention no discipline in controlling her mouth - is able to earn a living as a crime writer/journalist. 

Her disregard for the truth is probably a model for today's media.

Still, no one is making me watch it, but the later episodes are taken to a higher plane by the absence of Maddy Magellan.


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