Did you ever have all your prior assumptions confirmed in one go? That would be the best way I could describe where things are at on my various North-American-Jews-today beats. First, we have the survey data indicating rather persuasively that American Jews are concerned about antisemitism but see Donald Trump as making matters worse. Did you know that American Jews tend to vote Democrat? You did, we all did. The people most in need of this information—namely anyone who imagines Trump’s anti-antisemitism campaign is at the behest of the majority of American Jews—are alas unlikely to take it in. One can simply keep showcasing it, lest anyone care. I remain pessimistic on that front, but flag and share this manner of info at a regular clip all the same.
Then there’s the yes mildly self-important New York Times video showcasing the old-news-to-us fact that three Yale professors—Jason Stanley, Marci Shore, and Timothy Snyder—left New Haven (for now, at least) for Toronto. The criticism of Trump strikes me as sound, though its precise relationship to these three people’s relocations remains tenuous. The video’s title, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.,” hints that one is meant to connect these two facts, but deftly avoids causality. Snyder spells out that he is not fleeing Trump. These three fascism experts think Trump is fascistic. But also, these moves were already underway to varying degrees, and involve taking excellent jobs at a top university in a desirable location. There’s plenty more to say about Trump, but about these three professors’ new appointments, maybe not.
I feel as though I’ve said my piece on these matters, for now at least, and will take advantage of the subject-matter flexibility of this column to do something other than repeat myself. With that in mind, prepare to do a bit of time travel (or streaming, if you’ve got BritBox).
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If ever there was a show whose two lead characters mistakenly ping Jewdars, it would have to be Jonathan Creek, a 1997-2016 but new-to-me comedic mystery show, in which I am now only in 1999. I watched two full seasons with this Jewish-angle thought in the back of my mind, thinking there’d be no way to ever write about it because it’s so ineffable. What exactly was making me think this?
Some of it is about banter or sensibility. But also, Alan Davies, in the titular role, has a hair type I did not know gentiles let alone British ones were capable of possessing. (I’m not being entirely serious here. I am well aware that Jews look all different ways and that the very handsome actor Daniel Hill exists.) A young Alan Davies looks like a less Swedish-looking version of the American actor Jesse Eisenberg. And he’s playing an awkward brainiac, one whose parents are doctors in Philadelphia. Jonathan Creek isn’t Jewish, but let us just say he would not be microaggressed at a synagogue by people who didn’t think he belonged.
Madeline Magellan, played by the similarly non-Jewish Caroline Quentin, is an assertive, sarcastic journalist who eats (as versus the more WASPy drinks) her feelings. She looks and seems like an amalgam of Jewish women I’ve known my whole life. Episodes regularly juxtapose Maddy with slim, refined, conventionally attractive blondes, who fill the canonical role of the “shiksa” to her Jewish-lady lead, except for the small matter of, Maddy isn’t Jewish.
Or is she?
The still on BritBox introducing the first episode of Season 3, “The Curious Tale of Mr. Spearfish,” shows Maddy seated between a modestly dressed young brunette and a man with payes and a black hat (but no beard). This was my first indication that this would be the show’s Jewish Episode.
That scene is a fleeting one (Maddy is observing a court proceeding, seated with unnamed fellow spectators), but the episode opens with Maddy pretending to be Jewish, in order to play along with the assumption an acquaintance has made of her. She has decided to pretend Jonathan is a gynecologist. A Jewish gynecologist? Unclear. The main point seems to be to allow for an elaborate if (medically) dated joke involving a double meaning of the word “cap”—it could be a yarmulke or something else.
Is the gynecologist fib rooted in a stereotype-ridden assumption (on Maddy’s part? on the show’s?) that Jews prefer to socialize with doctors? I might have thought so, were I not so deeply familiar with the 1993 episode of Britcom As Time Goes By, in which Dame Judi Dench’s character tells her sister-in-law that her writer boyfriend is a psychiatrist. It’s never spelled out why she tells that lie, because it’s clearly about being anxious in the moment and making up whatever has popped into her head. The scenes about this are so similar it comes across more as a TV trope or As Time Goes By homage than anything more profound.
While Jonathan Creek isn’t as twist-centric a show as Inside No. 9, it has its moments. A later scene has Maddy examining her profile in a mirror—studying her nose, it seems—and speculating that maybe she is Jewish, and that this explains why she reads as such to other people. She remarks that she had never known who her father was. The episode leaves Maddy’s Jewishness unresolved.
One could read this scene as antisemitic, or as a prompt for a recitation of points about how Jewishness isn’t about facial features, or how if she didn’t have a Jewish mother and wasn’t raised Jewish, this is all irrelevant.
But that’s not quite how it comes across. Maddy seems neutral to positive about the possibility that she’s been Jewish all along. She greets the possibility in the spirit of, huh, neat, as versus with some kind of panic or exoticization. She’s just sort of matter-of-fact about this as a possible explanation, as the tying-up of a loose end.
This part of the storyline is based on something real, but not pertaining to Quentin. David Renwick, the show’s writer and creator (also the man behind One Foot in the Grave), was interviewed on a BBC website about this episode, and had this to say:
“I suppose it’s worth mentioning the provenance of the whole strand about Maddy being convinced she was Jewish. There’s been always this conviction that I’m Jewish. Maybe I’m a 16th Jewish or something on my mother’s side and don’t know about it.”
It is here that I must confess to having wondered if Renwick was Jewish. Why? I know that “David” means nothing in that regard in a British context. Maybe it’s the similarities between One Foot in the Grave protagonist Victor Meldrew and Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe I was confusing David Renwick with David Remnick, the New Yorker editor, who is in fact Jewish.
Renwick has worked closely with Jewish actors and comedy writers. But there’s an even simpler explanation for the level of detail about and interest in Jewish life found in this episode.
Jonathan Creek had a Jewish producer, Verity Lambert, better known for producing Doctor Who. Was Maddy based on Lambert? Probably not—Quentin looks a bit like Lambert but uncannily like the late comedic genius Victoria Wood—but Lambert’s presence behind the scenes could explain how High Holidays catering, a menorah-ish candelabra (weirdly central, but certainly point-making), a reference to “kosher,” and whichever bits I’m forgetting ended up in this episode.
So does this mean Jonathan Creek is… Jewish art?
“The Curious Tale of Mr. Spearfish” exists in a nebulous land between Jewish humour and humour about Jews.
The Jewishness of Maddy’s friends is played up, for comedic effect, even before they’re introduced. Jonathan misreads their names as “Saul and Sadie Beetrootstain” (Maddy corrects that it’s Bechtenstein)—much in the same manner as ‘ethnic’-sounding names garner a ‘gesundheit’ on Britcoms of a certain age, presumably mimicking a fixture of everyday speech. (What do I know, I’m not British!) Sadie introduces “my husband, Saul, who’s in insurance,” as they open the door—an uncouth way of going about the what-do-you-do conversation at a dinner party. This is clearly a well-to-do couple, much gilding in their interior, but nouveau-riche, not the manor-house-owning set.
Then there is the matter of their even newer-money new neighbours, a young non-Jewish couple. The wife is wearing a crucifix necklace, and revealed to be quite churchy. The husband, for his part, grew up to non-believers in London, but has—and this is what the episode is about-about—sold his soul to the Devil, which is how they can afford their posh new home.
The specifics of this diabolical turn of events requires more plot summary than is relevant here, but the short if spoiler-y answer is—as in every Jonathan Creek episode I’ve seen thus far—that no, nothing uncanny has actually taken place. Jonathan, as always, provides a logical explanation for odd-seeming events. But yeah, maybe there’s something hmm about the juxtaposition of Jews and the Satanic-level unscrupulous, as though those are the two possible paths to (non-aristocratic) wealth.
Or rather, maybe there would be, were it not for a scene where the nice Christian wife tries to bond with Maddy over their shared antipathy to Devil-worship, under the assumption that Maddy, as a Jew, would have been raised with good values and not go in for that sort of thing. It’s a small moment in the grand scheme of the episode, but it spells out that the show itself is by no means conflating Judaism with Satanism. The Jewish episode is also the Devil episode, also the believing-Christian episode for that matter, with these disparate elements woven together under the vague theme of spirituality, with rationalist Jonathan, as always, getting the last word.
The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at [email protected], not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. Subscribe to The Jewish Angle wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll have more updates on Substack and The CJN’s own daily newsletter.
