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1!!Jonathan's past cases
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3* Why do characters who comment on these (which happens in various episodes) know more than they should? One of his fan club describes how he solved the crime from "Jack In A Box", but in that episode, the impression given at the end was that Maddy did not intend to tell the public about that (quite possibly due to her role in inadvertently helping to have the killer released from prison in the first place). And in another episode, someone praises his skills in solving the judge's murder from "Mother Redcap", but at the time, Jonathan gave the credit for that to the policeman in charge of the investigation.
4** I don't think it was ever stated that he did not talk about "Jack in A Box". And the implication running through those scenes was that it was in Maddy's book (since the fans were getting everything from the book). So that would be my explanation for that.
5** Jack Holiday's butler begged him not to tell anyone that his master was a murderer, and I got the impression that he agreed. Granted, that wouldn't necessarily stop anyone from writing about who killed Holiday, but it seems to be a needlessly cruel thing to do to corrupt the memories Rokesmith's family had of him. Although I guess it might have been necessary for him to do so for the sake of the justice system retaining its integrity.
6** I don't recall Holiday's butler actually asking them to keep it quiet -- he admitted that ''he'' learnt the truth, but kept it quiet out of respect for his boss -- but in any case, Rokesmith was found sealed in the bunker where Holiday was found; presumably the police would still have had to be called to deal with that body (which would then be returned to Rokesmith's family for burial), and the truth would have come out from there.
7*** Possible scenario: Maddy writes up all the mysteries, but changes the names and locations. Now, the scene in which the Jonathan Creek nerds discuss the Jack Holiday case ''does'' have them using Holiday's correct name, but it could be that in that particular instance they had deduced the real identities of those involved (Holiday having been a celebrity whose death would have been reported at the time) and name-dropped them in order to try and impress Jonathan.
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9!!Adam
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11* Adam Klaus is played by an actor from Boston with a [[HollywoodNewEngland strong New England accent]], but his sister Kitty has a broad Scottish accent. While it's not so far-fetched that one of them may have picked up a local accent upon relocation (and maintained it), can siblings' accents really be that different? And where do Klaus and Kitty come from originally?
12** Probably; it would depend also on how early the accent shift occurred and how hard they worked at it. It's also possible that Adam, being something of a pretentious twat, is the kind of guy who'd not only adopt a false accent but stubbornly maintain it around people who know full well that it's a complete act (as also evidenced by the fact that Kitty calls him "Chester", it being implied that this is his actual first name and that "Adam Klaus" is a stage name; this, though, was not explored further after Kitty's only appearance in the show).
13** For a real life example of this, John Barrowman and his sister Carole. They were born and raised in Glasgow, but he has a pretty American sounding accent. When the two are together, the Scottish comes out, especially in older sister Carole.
14*** Adam Klaus' accent is almost certainly fake in-universe -- just as his real name is Chester. The guy's a full-time fake. Plus, of course, RuleOfFunny.
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16!!The Wrestler's Tomb
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18* Why isn't Martin (the husband of Katrina, with whom Hedley was having an affair) ever considered as a suspect? He comes across as a rather jealous and violent man.
19** Why would he be? It’s only near the end that they find out Katrina was having an affair with Hedley, and even his wife (who was fully aware he slept with other women) had no idea he was sleeping with their cleaner. Once they found that out, and figured out therefore that the model wasn’t his type, it made far more sense with the other clues (the painting with the bullet holes etc) that it was the model herself who killed him.
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21!!The Grinning Man
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23* Surely the people being tipped into the water tank would have splashed water all over the bathroom? Or, in a more disgusting thought, wouldn't decomposing body bits from previous victims have washed back into the tub?
24** In the former case, finding water splashed around in a bathroom might not arouse suspicion by itself.
25*** It might if the towel was still dry. "They disappeared at the point they took a bath" would seem to be a reasonable deduction, in that situation. This is probably why the original murderer went to some lengths to recover the soap.
26*** The bathtub may get rid of the body, but what about clothes? Mina may have left hers in the bedroom, but surely some would have done what Joey did and got changed in the bathroom leaving clothes and underwear on the floor? - surely if they did that would have been a giveaway for what they were doing when they vanished.
27* Also, why would the guests (particularly the more recent ones) have a soak in a tub that had obviously never been cleaned in several years? You'd probably come out even ''grubbier''.
28** Maybe Lance Gessler knew about the trap and regularly maintained and cleaned it (but figured it would be too risky to remove the bodies from the tank.)
29* More to the point, surely there must have been people who spent the night in that room and did not have a bath?
30** That's why there is (or was) a container of ectoplasm above the bed, as anyone who had that stuff poured all over them would want to clean up, and what better way to do that than make use of the en-suite facilities?
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32!!Jack In the Box.
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34* If the bunker wasn't intended to be used and "no one had been down here for years" why had large boxes full of useful supplies (soap, lightbulbs, loo rolls, matches, etc) been just left in there? How wasteful.
35** Amateur Survivalism. Survivalists know ''always'' keep a good supply of essentials. Jack and his wife most likely had the basic non-edible supplies (which are easier to get) but stopped before they bought food (which is harder to get - at least the stuff that will last years without going bad). Remember they ''did'' intend to use it in case of nuclear war. Jack and his wife didn't build it themselves and likely didn't have the simplest clue what they were even doing. They failed to realize that soap & matches go bad after a few years. (Matches need to be replaced after a few months.)
36** Also, it's directly stated that the bunker was commissioned during a time of great tension between the Soviet Union and NATO, but by the time it got to the stage it was things were much calmer. Presumably he bought them in panic and then, once he calmed down a bit or got distracted by something else, simply forgot about them.
37* Alan Rokesmith was wearing a leather jacket when he shot Holliday but had removed it when he sealed himself in the wall. How come no one found it in the bunker and got suspicious?
38** Maybe he took it off because he got hot with all the hard work of brick laying and already put it ''inside'' the fake wall before he gets in himself. The cotton wool from the pill-bottle (which Jonathan found) was dropped by accident and he didn't realise that he'd dropped it; he'd hardly do the same with a jacket.
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40!!The Problem at Gallows Gate
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42* What exactly is Duncan's plan with regards to faking his own death with the help of his Army friends? If, as is implied but not outright stated, it's all a ruse to get back at Felicity for spurning his affections, when exactly was he intending to reveal to the wider world that he's been alive all along? He couldn't have stayed in hiding at his friend's place for ever. How was everyone at the party informed of his 'death'? Given that the police start digging up the family grave in order to prove that his body ''isn't'' there, there must've been a funeral of some sort (mirroring the sub-plot about Adam supposedly being buried alive while actually watching the proceedings from his caravan) -- did any of his friends attend that? It's not even mentioned! Furthermore, what happened to the house in the time period (stated as being three weeks) between the party and Jonathan, Maddy, Clare and the police showing up to snoop around? Would there not be staff present? The place looks like it's not been touched. And with the owner apparently dead, would the legal system not have kicked in in terms of probate, death duties and so on?
43** Given that there was no death certificate (because the ambulance was not a real one and did not take him to a hospital, hence no medical professional ever pronounced him as dead), Duncan was never ''legally'' dead. Therefore the question of probate, death duties etc. would not apply. Nothing illegal about a practical joke, even if it was in bad taste -- although given that the police had to dig up the grave to prove his body wasn't there, there might be a case for prosecuting him for wasting police time. That said, given that he gets wrongly arrested and charged with murder, the CPS might not be entirely willing to prosecute him for the former.
44* Speaking of which, how exactly does Maddy avoid getting nicked for wasting police time after her lie about flushing one of the tapes down the toilet causes the police to literally trawl through the cottage's sewage system? To say nothing of tampering with a crime scene...
45** Maddy is a KarmaHoudini, who commits various crimes (trespassing, phone-hacking, impersonating a police officer, etc) but never gets brought to book.
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47!!Black Canary
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49* Beryl Carney's estranged daughter Hannah figures out that her mother is actually alive and masquerading as her twin sister Marella Carney within seconds of meeting her again, just by intuition. Why then, were the dead Marella Carney's own family not able to deduce that it was not Marella who had survived but Beryl? Surely Marella's husband and daughter would have been able to work this out because they knew the sisters so well (more so than Hannah, who had run away years previously) — there must have been differences between the two that the husband and daughter would have known about, especially if estranged daughter Hannah is able to work out what had happened so quickly.
50** Yeah, it's ludicrous to suppose that the Marella's husband and twelve year old daughter wouldn't instantly have known that Beryl was taking their wife/mother's place, but there ''is'' an attempt to handwave it when the butler says: "you were blinded by her love — for you, for Charlotte."
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52!!The Judas Tree
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54* The ending of ''The Judas Tree''. The killers get away with murder and no one seems to care! Okay, I can understand that Emily and Kim killed that mentally-disabled boy when they were teenagers and were let off scot-free, But what happened to them seems like DisproportionateRetribution: years later, spoiler:to murder one in cold blood and frame the other for her murder. And even if you ''do'' believe that they deserved it, it's still rather off-putting that Jonathan and Joey apparently decide to keep quiet about the whole thing, especially since Joey was friends with Emily, and Jonathan was romantically interested in her (well, almost had a one-night stand with her at least).
55** Joey and Emily weren't friends, they simply met through Joey's blog and she'd agreed to try to help her.
56** Plus, the way it's framed isn't so much 'oh well, we don't really care that you murdered one of them and stitched up the other one' and more 'we know you ''did'', but unfortunately we can't actually ''prove'' it'.
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58* ''The Judas Tree''. What the hell?
59** So much of the hidden mystery is dependant on the fact that the police are completely incompetent in every faccet of thier job. Why the hell didn't anyone do a background check on Emily to see if she had any prior criminal history? Wouldn't someone doing basic paperwork have noticed that Emily had been on trial for another murder? And looked up what happened to to the murder victim's family? Even though the husband had changed his name, someone might have looked into his history as part of the case. Even if the police decided it was unrelated and ignored it, there WOULD be a nosy reporter who would want to track down and interview the family of Emily's previous victim to get their thoughts on the current trial (especially the press of the Jonathan's Creek's world, who are regularly portrayed as insanely biased), On finding out that Emily had a former murder case, SOMEONE would have tried to track down the other accused. Or better yet, '''realize that the victim of her last case had the same damn home address as the victim of the current case.'''
60** Also, any competent medical examiner, on noticing a murder victim was pregnant, would have done a DNA test on the baby to make sure it was the husband's. If it wasn't, then that might have bearing on the friggin' case. ("Hmm...maybe the husband was in on it...")
61** Secondly, why didn't the medical examiner do a simply tox test and see that the murder victim had a serious amount of tranquilizers in her blood? Far too much to even be walking, let alone struggle against someone pushing her out a window.
62*** The body would have had rope abrasions on her wrists and ankles too, signifying that she'd been tied up.
63** Why was the wife so willing to give up her entire life, her career, her family just so that her husband could get revenge on two girls who ''may'' have killed a kid thirty years ago? How is she going to even leave the country? Use the dead woman's identity?
64*** As I recall he met and married her when he was living abroad and they had only recently moved to the UK. Since she isn't British and hadn't lived there for long it wouldn't be such a big deal to leave.
65** Also, the entire plan is dependent on the idea that, I don't know...''Emily wouldn't just quit.'' No matter how good the money if I started seeing ghosts, having hallucinations [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and my boss was a bitch]] I would '''leave'''.
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67!!Gorgon's Wood
68* Given that the contract Carla signed was fraudulent (she was led to believe that she was merely being asked for an autograph), and given the time frame involved (no more than a few weeks), couldn't Carla sue or cancel the contract on the basis of lack of knowledge of what she was signing up for, and that the company must have had the items with her likeness/name on made up in advance of her signing it, since there were items already in the adult shop for sale? Especially given that Carla would have witnesses who could verify where she was and what she was doing on the date in question, and Jonathan can also attest to the diversionary tactics used to obtain said signature.
69** RuleOfFunny, probably. We also don’t know how this was resolved after the events of this episode, as it’s Carla’s last appearance on the show.
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