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Guest stars
Ralph Brown, Geraldine Alexander, Christine Moore and Mel Cobb.
Directed by Sandy Johnson
First transmitted 31st May 1997
Ratings 7.62 million
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The Puzzle:
Prog Rock star Roy Pilgrim always did like his groupies young. But when one such teenage fan is invited to Pilgrim's house, only to disappear, the police are quick to suspect foul play. Pilgrim's bride-to-be Francine is horrified too, and is quick to distance herself from him.
Pilgrim himself is baffled - at the time of the girl's disappearance he was chained to a radiator in his meditation room, the victim of an intruder. Despite being in full view of the front door, Pilgrim swears nobody entered his house, except an unusual red-bellied frog...
Jonathan Creek's investigation of the mystery leads him to the Creed of Eden, a cult of tree-hugging free thinkers who are protesting Pilgrim's innocence. [Solution]
Quiz
Five quick questions to test your knowledge of the episode.
Alan Davies
"It left me cold, all this stuff [about] Jonathan Creek's love of the concept album. It didn't translate for me, but I enjoyed the jokes - especially the stuff about the White Room.
"The thing that I remember about that one strangely is [that] we shot it up near Lowestoft and I had to get up there on the train one day. I think it was the Sunday and there were engineering works. There was an actress called Caroline Longq (Sheena) who was in the show and we travelled together...
"We had to get on a coach, and [on it] we met Neil Innes. He needed to borrow a mobile phone [and] not everyone had mobile phones seven years ago, or whenever it was, so I gave him a lend of mine. He said: 'I've got a bottle of red wine here, would you like to have a glass of wine?' So the three of us sat on the back of this coach going to Suffolk, drinking his red wine and talking to him about some of his funny tales."
Jonathan Geek:
At the mention of Edwin Drood, Jonathan proves that he is nothing if not a sad old fan boy. "They were in the vanguard of progressive rock right through the 70s and 80s. They produced some seminal stuff." He goes on to reveal that he knows more facts about the band than its lead singer does. Anyone who can use the word "vanguard" in conjunction with a group who boast an electric violin and a name stolen from an obscure, unfinished Dickens novel has, frankly, just crowned himself King Geek.
High concepts:
David Renwick had originally intended for Prog Rock band Edwin Drood to be called Mighty Joe Young, until he was informed that a real band had already taken the name. Uriah Heap's appropriation of a band name from a Charles Dickens character led to his final choice. Probably the most famous electric violinist in Prog Rock before Roy Pilgrim was Mik Kaminski of the Electric Light Orchestra or ELO, with Laurie Anderson most associated with the instrument today.
The Solution: (point your mouse over the space below)
Knowing that Francine was about to halt Pilgrim's generous donations to their cult, members of the Creed of Eden kidnapped Tracy. They also knocked out Pilgrim and transplanted him to an exact copy of his meditation room that they'd had built in the grounds of their commune. This lead Pilgrim to his confused claims of not seeing Tracy at what he believed was his real front door.
The Creed correctly predicted that Francine will leave Pilgrim, who they hope would continue his donations as thanks for their support. The clue was in the frog, actually a rare Anasazi River Toad, bred by the cult for its hallucinogenic properties. Jonathan surmised that it could only be found at the commune, not the house.
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Trivia
Adam Klaus has been played by two actors - Stuart Milligan and Buffy star Anthony Head.
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