The House of Monkeys was the fifth and final episode of Jonathan Creek’s first season and presented another locked-room mystery with an apparently impossible escape. In this podcast Gerry and Iain take a look at a friendly gorilla and some apparently telling body language.
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When Dr Ingrid Strange (Annette Crosbie) returns home to find her husband Dr Elliot Strange (Charles Kay) locked in his study, dead, with no apparent method of escape possible it doesn’t take her long to call on family friend Jonathan Creek to discover the grisly truth.
Simon Day and Sara Markland also appear, as the Stranges’ son Jordan and his actress wife Cathy, while there is a charming cameo from an animatronic great ape as Samson the gorilla. Selina Cadell and Barnaby Kay appear as police officers.
The House of Monkeys was again written by the show’s creator, David Renwick. Sandy Johnson remained in charge behind the camera, while Susan Belbin continued as producer.
The House of Monkeys was released in 1997. It is 59 minutes long and originally aired on the BBC. An abridged edition can be viewed on Netflix in the UK and Ireland and the original cuts are available on DVD in other countries, including a comprehensive box set of all the episodes up until Christmas 2016, released by the BBC.
Aw loved this episode! Locked room murder. I think maybe looking into it too much. Weather the envelope would be licked or not. I guess the murderer wanted someone to be poisoned in that house. Again great character casting. Think sandy did a great job with this one. Lots of mini stories too about the families issues and relationships. I agree tho I don’t think it’s the son’s fault she had an affair tho. Overall I good episode of creek and good story I thought. One of my top episodes. Plus monkeys are awesome! Hehe
Chimp would certainly have been better, but fun episode… https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/06f27c0643d2cc92f880f8516d48c8f07151df3c6c4791998d94407246519fda.jpg
Good episode. Events over the past year or so have led me to choose my words carefully (as my intention is not to be offensive), but I’m not as worried about the fact that the killer couldn’t be certain that the intended victim would be killed. Plots like this are usually very chancy and aren’t often successful. There have been numerous examples of letter bombs and the like killed people who were not the intended victim. You can see why I’m treading carefully. It is rare for these kinds of terrorist plots (let’s call it what it is) to succeed. Some do of course as we’ve seen. So I’ll just say that the unpredictability of the killing didn’t bother me. That seems realistic.
I liked the episode myself.
I liked it too! 🙂 Only thing for me is the end felt a little rushed, with everything about the killer being caught, etc. tossed into a quick conversation. I had no idea that ape was an animatronic puppet. That’s wild, man. Makes me want to watch it again for a closer look at the ape.
Nooo! That’s GOTTA be a person in a suit. I can see the face being done with animatronics, but the body’s a person…. Right?
Apparently all animatronic. I wonder if he had a stunt double for the lunge at JC!
Aw yes I’m sure in the extras on the dvd they says it’s not a real monkey. Very clever mind. Great episode and lots of effort went into making it I’m sure.