Jonathan Up * Creek:

It's a portal to a former, more alive era of my life; a habit of something to look forward to, even if it is the dissection afterwards.

Its name allows itself for sarky comments, as does Willow and Dawson's.

British comedy often has the peculiar mix of kinky sex and put downs:

Del boy to Rodney - 'you plonker/pilchard'; Lovejoy to Eric; Blackadder to Baldric; The Vicar of Dibley to Alice; and Jonathan and Maddy/Carla squabble. For supposed family viewing, many of these include mention of bestiality, inadvisable uses of toothbrushes, torture, and how being buried alive near an underground line makes one appear to masturbate. Magic lends itself to a tortured mind. Like Richard Curtis, David Renwick's writing is very much of this ilk, with an edge of slapstick thrown in. The Reconstituted Corpse (Series1 episode 3) ends with the line 'I'll go and flush my head down a toilet"; the previous episode, jack in The Box, with slipping on bananas and dog pooh.

In this respect, I do not feel at all British. Our exports - including gritty miserable dramas about industries and slums - never reflect the country I inhabit.

I watch Creek to pick it apart.

As a plot and structure, it is easy to do. It is the most formulaic programme I have ever seen, and that's for a genre that clearly has a set one which even those who haven't attended screenwriting courses can spot.

There's two plots: a subplot to lighten what the writer and creator David Renwick calls the dark moments. There certainly are these: a woman sawn in two, another dying in agony by a garden fork, the crushing in a concrete dungeon are some of the not so nice ideas clearly indicated though never shown. The subplot rarely has any bearing on the main mystery plot and as I've yet to find a subplot amusing or engaging, I would do without them. In America, the hour long episodes have adverts inserted, meaning some of this is lost. Renwick sounds disappointed for his transatlantic audience; I think that America has the better programme. Whether this silly plot starts the story is one of the few things that alternates, but it will certainly end it. It ranges from a woman with a porridge fetish; an unwanted blind date; a loud band outside; or a portaloo mixed with watching one's own colon operation on video; a dwarf security guard; and elephant that poohs itself on stage and dies - mostly they are forgettable, and wasted screen time. There is some use of the silly plot to assist with the main one in Time Waits for Norman, and thebest is in Mother Redcap, where the legendary deaths in an old inn have a principle which helps explain the judge in locked room stabbing.

Within the first ten minutes, the murder will have happened - or occasionally, the other kind mystery will have been set up - an alien skeleton, a disappearing girl, or a man who is in two places at once. If it's a feature length episode, this can take very much longer. In the two part clumsily named The Problem atGallow's Gate, the mystery is only apparent at the end of part one, which I felt very poor writing and there was no clear hook or drive through the whole first hour or so.

In the very first episode, The Wrestler's Tomb, we have to wait a long time to meet Mr Creek, who is introduced as spotting a miscalculation at the supermarket till, and then going home to his windmill to saw up the doll he's just bought. This premiere is interesting, but strange that neither Jonathan or Madeleine Magellan - our main characters - are not shown for so long into the episode. the murder party will change every week; the only other regular being Adam Klaus - Jonathan's employer.

So why waste so much time on people we'll never see again after today?

Yet in some ways, too little time is spent, as I'll explain later...

So: the impossible part of the mystery is set up, which is all too frequently a murder and/or disappearance from within a locked room. Jonathan soon seems to know things that we cannot... but then with all mysteries, the plot thickens - nearly always with a second murder. It ends with a plenary where the accused and victims all gather round to hear from Jonathan and Maddy/Carla how they solved the case, who freely outs the murderer without any interruption, violence or repercussion. And how the police are so open to interference and assistance from not only these but Miss Marple, Brother Cadfael, Jessica Fletcher et al... always surprises me.

A true mystery allows the audience to get there before the sleuth. Jonathan Creek makes too large a leaps. The writer uses others in the story - especially Jonathan's female sidekick - to speak for what Renwick assumes of us: that we are patronised and nonplussed, even irritated. This adds to the condescension and makes the Mouse of Amsterdam dwelling magician's assistant all the more nauseating a hero. What's worse is that Jonathan's brilliance is built up each week from comments of others, which has the effect of turning my opinion of him and the show in the other - negative - direction.

The episode with the Jonathan Creek fan club was so laced with puffed up self reference and reverentiality that I could hardly bear to watch. The way he treated his groupies was further example of how Jonathan and Maddy frequently are un-laudable characters. It's a testament to Caroline Quentin that Maddy's shallow, bitchy and grasping nature was obscured to me for so long, and I kind of let her off those faults. But it is also Richard Curtis-like in the shallowness of relationships.

One of my problems with the mystery genre is that we are not meant to care for the murdered. Death is such an immense occurrence, and yet the whole genre works on not having pity or getting involved with the deceased, or even much righteous anger for the crime; but on enjoying solving a puzzle as if it were a crossword. Bereavement and crime become entertainment, and there's often little by way of emotion in any of the many crime dramas I have read and watched.

Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes is a British drama to be proud of as a national export.

It has an exciting plot, it has humour (which I often laughed out loud at), and it has very human, touching moments. It is a testament that a genre I don't care for - police/action - and characters I hated became such a draw that I really became quite fond of DCI Gene Genie Hunt and his team. I didn't want the final episodes to finish, especially of Ashes to Ashes. I welled up as John Simms and Keeley Hawes each faced their families in the past. I cared about the romances and friendships, about Keely's daughter, though I am not a mother myself. I have been moved by the weekly stories - an estranged gay son, a trans woman, an abused prostitute.

I even felt sympathy for all football supporters being branded as hooligans, which is a complete first for me.

But I have never cared about Jonathan Creek - not for those in the mystery, or for Jonathan and his will-they-won't-they sidekick.

If Jonathan Creek could attain that ongoing storyline as well as a self contained one; if there was more between his female companion than sarcasm and the occasional hissy of jealousy, this would be a far better show; and also if we could care about the victims. In Cadfael, we are not glad at the unseen (often fatal) punishment of the murderer. This story has wisdom, forgiveness and gentleness. The ending is not 'I'll shove me head down a toilet' of Creek, but that someone has released, forgiven and grown because of the macabre events of 12th century Shrewsbury.

Julia Sawalha must have a mild Baywatch contract where her high heeled, low cut décolletage character seems to have to flash extra parts of her for titillation. One week (in Seer of the sands), a crab bites her - not on her hand or ankle - but high up on her thinly stockinged thigh; and then in The Chequered Box, she has to wear men's pyjamas and lose the bottom half.

Adam Klaus gives nothing to the story. Jonathan's job as the unseen devisor of the tricks which Adam performs to public acclaim is great for mystery solving. But Adam's womanising and scrapes, great ego and unsisterly behaviour are not endearing and neither do they push the plot along.

Unlike Ashes to Ashes which champions the marginalised and misunderstood, Creek finds amusement in distaste over gay men (The Chequered box over Brendan's revelation of his brief gay marriage), nudism; and the 3 ft high security guard, eaten by snake (The Seer of The Sands) did nothing to give small people a chance to be seen as serious actors or normal members of society. The Chequered Box made silly black/white ethnicity comments, from a black actor, regarding the swapped heads of decapitated motorcyclists in the morgue. Its attempt to positively show a Christian character was fumbling, though I think, well intentioned. Out of the many and various Christians I have met (or other spiritualities) I have never heard them refer to God as 'Mr G'. Renwick obviously thought he was being provocative when Creek says (in The Chequered Box, the penultimate episode) that Britain is a country that doesn't blink when someone mounts a Jesus-like crucifixion as a publicity stunt. I've no idea what Points of View's mailbag was after that episode; perhaps it was ignored due to the further self aggrandisement assumed by the writer: and that JC simply isn't important enough to be considered a slight to the Holy one who shares his initials.

For a show with a confident and seemingly all knowledgeable protagonist, there are several inaccuracies, such as in Satan's Chimney, regarding the age of the Scottish Castle (a rare trip out of London and Southern England).

There are some where the plot wouldn't work:

In House of monkeys, the gorilla is so bad I thought it was the killer, it was so obviously a man dressed up (the python in The Seer was also less than convincing). The plot of that was so contrived I cannot bear to relate it.

The Chequered Box - why wouldn't DCI say 'I never saw the corpse' when presented with photos that apparently showed him in the same room as a hung woman.

Why was an extra wall needed? couldn't he just have been lured into the room?

I feel as if I've bitched in the manner of Maddie, which I am not wholly proud of. For all I've said, Jonathan Creek is entertaining; and the fact I watched the whole of the episodes, some of them twice, shows there is a draw.