  Watch a clip |
Guest stars
Steven Berkoff, Mary Tamm, Bill Bailey and Stuart Milligan.
Directed by Sandy Johnson
First transmitted 26th December 2001
Ratings 7.60 million
|
The Puzzle:
Actress Vivian Brody poses as a dead body in a locked room during filming of her latest movie. Only problem is, once the cast break down the door with an axe and the shot is complete, they discover she really is dead. The film's director, Herman, is mortified.
Brody was the ex-wife of top magician Alan Kalanak, who invites Jonathan Creek to a Scottish castle to attend Vivian's funeral - and hopefully shed some light on the mystery. The castle is the home of Satan's chimney - a dungeon used by servants of Queen Mary back in the 1500s to send Protestants to a fiery hell. They would be placed in the circular dungeon, the door would be closed, and minutes later nothing would remain apart from small piles of ash. Herman invites Kalanak to read one such account of the deaths to the assembled mourners.
Kalanak then sets out to solve the mystery, locking himself, chained, in the dungeon, and then seemingly escaping - leaving a prop skeleton behind. He calls Jonathan shortly after, claiming that he's leaving the castle abruptly as he thinks he's on to something. hen Carla discovers Kalanak's body some distance from the castle the following morning, Jonathan suspects revenge may be at the root of both murders. And was Vivian Brody's two-year absence from the film world nearly thirty years ago a clue? [Solution]
Quiz
Five quick questions to test your knowledge of the episode.
Alan Davies
"It was all a bit of a palaver. David had written this script for a Christmas special - a 90-minute one like we did previously - and Caroline didn't want to be in it. So that really did pull the rug from under everyone's feet, and David didn't know what to do. It takes him so long [with] the structure [of a story] - like building a ship with matchsticks.
"Caroline didn't want to appear at all, not even for a week of the shoot. I'm sure she had her reasons, personal reasons, that we never really got to the bottom of, but that was what she decided so once she decided that she didn't want to be there, David was left with a script that didn't work. He had to go away and take it apart again and create a new character because he always said, 'You can't really have Jonathan Creek without his sounding board when all the stuff is going on in his mind'.
"In a novel you can have an interior monologue when a leading character is working out what's going on, but for a film or television you have to have Dr Watson for Sherlock Holmes, it's somebody for Holmes to explain it to. And then, of course, Watson has his own characteristics which always help and [it's] the same with Maddy - she always had her own feminine intuition or ballsy brazenness - bursting into rooms or whatever she used to do that Jonathan wouldn't dare They were a good combo, you know.
"So he had to bring in a new sidekick and he created this agent character. There were only really two actresses that he was interested in - one of them was Tamsin Greig, who was tied up playing in Black Books. And the second one was Julia."
David Renwick
"I was well into the script of Satan's Chimney, with Maddy in it as usual, when I received a message from Caroline saying she wouldn't be available to do any Jonathan Creek that year because she wanted to take more time off to try for a second baby.
"So it then became a question of whether we put the whole project on hold until she was available again or, as happened, whether we went ahead, wrote in a new character and recast. That was the BBC's preference, because they wanted a show for that Christmas, so it wasn't terribly difficult for me to introduce a different character.
"Once it was written, of course, the problem then became casting. It's very, very hard to define the qualities required by an actress to play a part like Carla. We saw so many really good, strong, talented actresses, but there's a certain element of unforced natural fun that Caroline has in abundance and which we were looking for again in her replacement.
"Although the character was very different, her function within the show was pretty much the same as a foil and a contrast, to Creek. I was quite keen that she had a very forceful persona. She attempted to be very forceful but underneath it all you could see that it was an ineffectual kind of forcefulness. She actually was really very vulnerable and quite soft centred. That was what made you enjoy her and, in a way, enjoyed seeing her fail to be as robust and spunky as she thought she was.
"Of course Creek could see through all that instantly, and there was some enjoyment in his capitalising on it and exploiting her because she was giving him such a hard time. But, deep down, you knew that they really are going to like each other. It's one of those classic old 40's Hollywood sparring partner situations, where they are actually going to end up marrying each other."
Turret trickery:
Doomdorf Castle wasn't a real location, rather a composite of several. The landscape shots were filmed in Scotland, but the building itself was Raby castle, situated near Darlington. The landscape and the building were computer-composited in post-production, with some extra features from another castle added in for good measure. All the interiors, including Satan's Chimney itself, were filmed at Pinewood Studios.
The Solution: (point your mouse over the space below)
Vivian was killed by her son Tom, who she had given away for adoption but still watched over. She'd discretely arranged for him to work on her latest film to help him out and, having always been fascinated by her but not knowing who she really was, Tom had fallen in love with her. When the truth was revealed, the shocked and easily-led man teamed up with Kalanak to kill her, using an axe modified to fire a bullet when it broke down the door during the scene where she died.
Kalanak himself was killed by Herman, when the latter realised the magician's involvement in his star's death. Satan's Chimney worked like the plunger on a cafetiere - with a dummy floor descending from the ceiling and crushing the victim, in this case Kalanak, concealing the body until it could later be removed and dumped. Herman re-edited a recording of the story Kalanak had read out earlier in the evening - a story containing words and phrases carefully chosen so that they could later be re-assembled into the fake phone message played to Jonathan to throw him off the scent.
|
|
|
|
Trivia
Adam Klaus has been played by two actors - Stuart Milligan and Buffy star Anthony Head.
|
|
