Curmudgeonly author Giles De'Ath, a widower with a marked distaste for modern popular culture, attempts to buy a ticket for a film adaptation of an E.M. Forster novel, but instead finds himself watching a tacky teen sex comedy. Yet when the beautiful Ronnie Bostock appears on the movie screen, Giles finds himself caught in a whirlwind of unanswered questions about both his own sexuality and his place in late 20th-century society.

Working from his home in a converted windmill, Jonathan Creek is a magician with a natural ability for solving puzzles. He soon puts this ability to the use of solving impossible crimes and mysterious murders.

Instead of spending her golden years lying down, the indomitable Hetty Wainthropp found her calling late in life. Combining common sense, her husband, and her pocketbook, this senior sleuth takes on all the cases the police deem too minor.

Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.