Jonathan Creek

Madeline Magellan:
Enough with the pedanticism and let us eat.

Jonathan Creek:
The word is pedantry.

[to Carla Borrega, having learned that her husband used to be married to a man]

Jonathan Creek:
I was just wondering what the technical term for that was - not so much "bigamy" as "bugger-me".

Jonathan Creek:
[about Carla's Father] I just remember saying that I thought he was a bit of a prick... ly sort of gentleman.

[after Jonathan stops a criminal holding Maddy hostage by throwing a card at his face]

Madeline Magellan:
If you'd missed, he would have killed me!

Jonathan Creek:
I did miss. I was aiming for his balls.

Carla Borrego:
[approaching Castle] Have you ever slept in a castle with a moat before?

Jonathan Creek:
I once passed out in front of a blocked urinal.

[when sneaking into a bat cave]

Maddy Magellan:
When this is all over I'm going to open a sweet shop. I've decided. With sour lemons.

[explaining how she met Jonathan]

Charlotte:
We went out for this wonderful meal, talked about everything. Then I took him back to my place. I literally offered myself on a plate to him that night... but, for whatever reason, he just made up an excuse and left... but, there you go, I suppose I just wasn't his type...

Maddy Magellan:
[dismissive] Hmm, suppose. Now, Charlotte, I just want to run over some facts about the case with you, would you mind.

Maddy Magellan:
I just thought I could be useful to you tonight, that's all.

Jonathan Creek:
What as? A contraceptive?

Maddy Magellan:
I wonder what it was in the end that drove her to it: the thought of what she did to her daughter, or what she had done to her sister. What did she really want us to forgive her for?

Jonathan Creek:
Marella Carney, "The Black Canary", a life-long claustrophobic. I told you that her twin sister, Beryl, was the one who had to go inside the boxes. Yet Marella has been travelling in a lift the size of a pencil case. Coupled together with that suicide note...

Maddy Magellan:
When she just put a kiss?

Jonathan Creek:
Why didn't she sign it? Why didn't she put 'Marella' or 'Mother' or something like that? I think we can safely assume, at the time of her death, the moment of confrontation, she couldn't bring herself to lie... about who she really was.

[long pause as Maddy thinks about it]

Maddy Magellan:
Oh, you top man, Jonathan! It wasn't Beryl at the end of that buzz saw, it was her sister! All these years Marella Carney wasn't Marella Carney at all. That explains everything.

Jonathan Creek:
No, it explains nothing.

[when getting rid of a cockroach]

Maddy Magellan:
Take it to the bottom of the garden and kill it with a spade!

Jonathan Creek:
Kill it with a spade? What am I? Jack "the Hat" McVitie?

D.I. Gideon Pryke:
I can smell guilt on a man like dung on a donkey.

[when walking into the theater and seeing Adam in a frog costume]

Adam Klaus:
Jonathan, good morning! Lovely day, isn't it?

Jonathan Creek:
What the - ? What the *hell* is going on here? Am I in the right theater?

Adam Klaus:
Hard to believe, isn't it, what a gifted designer can come up with in just 24 hours? But I'm sure you'll agree Elsa has outdone herself.

Elsa:
Well, I try not to give you just any old "frog coat". Always for Adam, something a bit special, yes?

Jonathan Creek:
[to himself] *Frock*/Frog Coat...

Jonathan Creek:
So this is it, is it? Through the swirling fog of Victorian London a young girl is slashed to ribbons by Toad of Toad Hall!

Jerry Bellinitus:
How have things been here? Any sign of improvement?

Lionel Prekopp:
She's been hold up in her room most of the day with a migraine. I couldn't tempt her with any lunch.

Jerry Bellinitus:
Some hormone thing I expect.

Lionel Prekopp:
Oh! There'll be an ovary at the back of it somewhere.

Maddy Magellan:
[entering restaurant with Gary Lobo] I don't think I'll be spending the morning in a tank of boiling hot ink again in a hurry...

[picks up a menu from a waiter]

Maddy Magellan:
I feel like a poached octopus!

[waiter nods his head, as if acknowledging an order]

Gary Lobo:
[at a table] Yeah, Personally I found her novels disturbing yet, er, compelling. When she writes, for example, of a mutant fetus that strangles a young girl with its umbilical cord. The metaphor is, er, obvious

[starts to touch Maddy's hands across the table]

Gary Lobo:
yet to mine the vilest scenes of obscenity to get to the core of the human condition...

Maddy Magellan:
[cynically]... and making wads of money selling loads of tacky books didn't really come into it?

[the waiter brings along the food]

Maddy Magellan:
What the hell is this?

Waiter:
Your order madam - the poached octopus...

Maddy Magellan:
[spluttering] Poached oct-? Have you gone stark staring bonkers?

Waiter:
If there's been a mistake, my sincerest apologies. It's no problem, I'll have it returned and you can place another order.

Maddy Magellan:
No alright! Go on then. You might as well leave it now that it's here I suppose...

[begins to tuck in]

Tom Terici:
How's the migraine?

Emma Lazarus:
Still zigging and zagging.

Stephen Claithorne:
Some miracles you don't want to believe in.

Jonathan Creek:
[to Maddy] You see, this is where you and everyone else gives up. You're making the big mistake of sticking to what is likely instead of what's logical.

Maddy Magellan:
Jonathon, we're looking at a scenario for which there is absolutely no conceivable explanation.

Jonathan Creek:
There's always an explanation. You've just got to think round corners. Don't always see what you're meant to see.

Maddy Magellan:
You know Jack Holiday shot himself last week?

Jonathan Creek:
Yeah, the only thing he ever did that made me laugh.

Maddy Magellan:
Oh, great! The poor man's dead!

Jonathan Creek:
Thay won't stop him from overacting.

Jonathan Creek:
So, how are things in the old investigative journalism department these days?

Maddy Magellan:
Yeah, still earning a crust here and there.

Jonathan Creek:
And Trevor... ?

Maddy Magellan:
Trevor and I were getting on each other's nerves in the end, so I did the mature thing and set fire to his underpants.

Maddy Magellan:
What kind of spineless cretin are you?

Jonathan Creek:
No special kind... just your average cretin with a train to catch.

Oliver:
...what you're suggesting is clearly impossible, Kirsten.

Jonathan Creek:
But we musn't confuse what's impossible with what's implausible.

Jason Tippet:
As I aid on the phone, it's so macabre. I don't really know where to start.

Maddy Magellan:
The beginning.

Jason Tippet:
[to Maddy] Would you buy a 100 year old building where seven men were quite literally terrified to death?

Ken Speed:
The question here being... why would a respectible Chinese assassin let his fingernails grow nearly a half inch.

Jonathan Creek:
They were in the vanguard of progressive rock right through the 70s and 80s. They produced some seminal stuff.

Madeline Magellan:
That's one way of putting it.

Roy Pilgrim:
[Suspicious of Jonathon and Madeline] What are you?

Madeline Magellan:
We're the only hope you got.

Roy Pilgrim:
[Explaining how he spent his time handcuffed to radiator] I wrote three songs just to get my mind off my bladder.

Sheena:
All right, why would you deliberately switch around a couple of hi-fi speakers?

Madeline Magellan:
That's the question.

Jonathan Creek:
That's not the question.

Sheena:
What d'you mean?

Jonathan Creek:
Fairly obviously you wouldn't.

Sheena:
So, what's the point?

Jonathan Creek:
None whatsoever I should think.

Sheena:
All right, you've lost me.

Madeline Magellan:
I think he's saying it could be accidental.

Jonathan Creek:
Consider this way round... someone comes in to Pilgrim's house, and for whatever reason removes a pair of identical-looking speakers from the White Room. They return them, and because they look the same, they put them back the wrong way round.

Sheena:
But who'd steal a pair of speakers and then just put them back again?

Jonathan Creek:
A very honest burglar.

[Adam is lusting after a pornography actress with unbelievably large breasts]

Adam Klaus:
Ohhhhhh. What I wouldn't give, Jonathan, for a piece of that action. The eighth and nine wonders of the world. If you're looking for a 360-degree experience, you could lose your whole face in there and never see it again. Forget about bras - you wouldn't get those in a *hammock*!

Jonathan Creek:
Have you finished?

Adam Klaus:
Sorry?

Jonathan Creek:
Are you done? Because I've really got better things to do than stand around here watching your tongue hanging out like a roller-blind at the sight of someone called Candy Mountains.

Ingrid Strange:
[to Jonathon as she gives him a proctology exam] Onto the bed now... underpants down... lie back... think of England.

Maddy Magellan:
[as she is in bed with Jonathon and speculating on Dr. Strange's murder] Or what about this? One of the animals did it... one of the little ones. Could've been hidden in a cupboard that was too small for a person and stabbed him in the back.

Jonathan Creek:
[Unenthusiastically] Right... I see your reasoning.

Maddy Magellan:
But you think it sucks? Why?

Jonathan Creek:
It's just that image of the organ grinder's monkey coming at you with a sword... Would you really scream for mercy?

Maddy Magellan:
...or put some money in its tin cup?

Jonathan Creek:
[Amazed after seeing a silverback gorilla use the toilet bowl] Almost human!

Jordan Strange:
[Waspishly] He's not so clever.

Jonathan Creek:
I thought for a gorilla that is quite impressive.

Ingrid Strange:
[to D.C. Spelling sitting on the couch who seems to be agitating the gorilla] Can I ask you not to sit like that. He's reading it as a sign of sexual dominance.

Maddy Magellan:
[Seeing Jonathon who has falled down the stairs and the gorilla, who was attacking him, lying dead after jumping off the balcony] What happened?

Jonathan Creek:
He just went... I don't know.

Maddy Magellan:
What?

Jonathan Creek:
Apeshit!

Ingrid Strange:
[Reprovingly] Cathy, you have the body of a woman and the brain of a sexually stunted newt.

Jonathan Creek:
[after trying out Jorman's mechanically-powered chair] Reminds me of the gynecology ride at Disneyland.

Maddy Magellan:
[Seeing a smoker's pipe on the bathroom floor] Oh, hey, look - under the basin. There's a pipe.

Jonathan Creek:
[Enjoying the pun] Usually is.

Maddy Magellan:
[Reprovingly] Jonathon!

Jonathan Creek:
There's only so much crap you can wade through.

Jonathan Creek:
What you see isn't always what's happening.

Maddy Magellan:
[after dreaming] I was being strangled by a giant badger.

Jonathan Creek:
So, do you want to know how it was done?

Maddy Magellan:
Yes!

Jonathan Creek:
That makes two of us.

David Churchin:
[Angrily to Zola] God help me, as I made you, I'll destroy you at any cost, and that's a promise!

Maddy Magellan:
[On her disastrous blind date to Shelford] You're really enjoying this, aren't you... watching me squirm?

Jonathan Creek:
[Deadpan] To a large extent.

Jonathan Creek:
Sometimes it's useful to look beyond the obvious.

Jonathan Creek:
[Last lines] I'll just go stick my head down a toilet, shall I?

Maddy Magellan:
[Going in and closing the door on him] Make sure you flush it.

Sylvester Le Fley:
Quality theater is too precious to be wasted on audiences.

Benjamin:
Are you two married?

Maddy Magellan:
Whatever gave you that idea?

Benjamin:
I saw you arguing.

Jonathan Creek:
That's right, but in our case we're just arguing in sin.

Jonathan Creek:
[to Maddy] Look to Eric's Spam sandwich. It contains the key to the whole affair.

Serena Shale:
[Angrily to Hedley] You're so transparent I may throw up!

Serena Shale:
[Looking at the nude painting of a woman being worked on by Hedley] Well, that brings back memmories. Anyone I know?

Hedley Shale:
All from photographs this time. I haven't had a live model in months.

Serena Shale:
You must be losing your touch.

Jonathan Creek:
[Referring to the taste used by Adam in the magic act] It's written to be a family show, Adam. You're reducing it to the level of a bank commercial.

Adam Klaus:
Sex and sorcery, Jonathon! Indivisible since the dawn of time!

Adam Klaus:
[to Madeline] That's all magic is! It's an illusion. It doesn't make the illusion magic.

Adam Klaus:
[to Jonathon as he is ogling Francesca] I want to lie beside her in a bath of warm glue!

Katrina Toplis:
[about Hedley] I never met a man like him. He had so many great qualities. Monogamy wasn't one of them.

Jonathan Creek:
[to Madeline] I never wanted to be a magician as such - swanning about with a silk handkerchief. It was, I don't know, the ingenuity at the back of it always fascinated the hell out of me.

Madeline Magellan:
[to Jonathon on the phone] You can't begin to imagine the fetid quagmire that passes for my love life.

Jonathan Creek:
Who'd have thought that was going to happen? Life's full of surprises.

Jonathan Creek:
[Referring to a sexual encounter he had] It was just one of those stupid irresistible monents...

Maddy Magellan:
[angrily]... and on the kitchen table! What did you use as a contraceptive, a set of napkin rings?

Norman Stangerson:
This is my crime... I've tried to love too many people.

Antonia Stangerson:
Maybe your crime is you don't know who to love!