What's Wrong With Jonathan Creek - Spoilers

We've now had 28 episodes over 16 years, but to this reviewer (Dan) it seems like Jonathan Creek is several years away from when it was good.

The format is still good - the idea of a magician's assistant solving baffling crimes as 'howdunnits' rather than 'whodunnits' has lots going for it.

The casting is still good.  Alan Davies is really likeable, and the guests and cameos do a reliably good job.

The chemistry is still good - the interplay with Sheridan Smith is as fun as it was with Caroline Quentin.

The problem is, I think, with the puzzles.  It's probably human nature to reminisce about how much better old plots were, but in this case it's surely true.  The solutions to the older cases were just more elegant and rewarding, for example the (spoilers!) duplicate room in No Trace of Tracy (Series 1) or the church clock that was giving the time as am rather than pm in The Miracle of Crooked Lane (Series 3).  Oh - and that bit where Caroline Quentin showed us how you hack into phones at least ten years before Leveson.

You need to suspend disbelief a bit for Creek, but the most recent episode The Clue of the Savant's Thumb had so many TWNH moments that it just got frustrating.  (Again, Spoilers!)  For example we were expected to believe that someone could cut their own head off with a chainsaw that had been sabotaged, and then his son in law would move the body back to the house and construct a scarecrow in a locked room, to fool his wife (& then put the body in the freezer to preserve it)...  Plus there were so many red herrings (hands gripping through a picture, statue dropping from a great height) that it was natural to want the old Creek back.

I much prefer the British system of TV where one writer writes, but surely this is evidence that David Renwick has run out of ideas.  There must be lots of other writers (or magicians) who can think up puzzles to match those of the earlier series.  Get some of them in to devise the key elements, then hand over to Renwick to write the dialogue and fit it all together.  Make the shows 50 minutes again too - the longer length just leads to them being flabbier with more red herrings, surely.