When a dead body impossibly vanishes from a locked study it is only the first in a chain of dark mysteries confronting Jonathan Creek and self-styled paranormal investigator Joey Ross.

Writer, producer, political campaigner, and all round polymath Franklin Tartikoff is one of the country's most eminent intellectuals. But tragedy and horror are about to engulf the vast old country house he shares with his beautiful wife, Rosalind, and their adopted daughter, Fariba.

On the day that Fariba returns from a spiritual journey to the remote Far Eastern island where she was born, her mother is attending the funeral of an old school friend - an event that will unleash disturbing memories of a classmate whose macabre death, 50 years ago in the school dormitory, was never explained.

Today, Waxwood Hall convent school lies eerily empty and derelict. But as Rosalind Tartikoff revisits her childhood haunts she finds that ghosts from the past still stalk its gloomy interior. Now a lecturer in humanities and modern philosophy, as well as being an avowed religious sceptic, how can she bear to admit – even to herself – that as a rebellious teenager in the Sixties she once had a miraculous vision of God?

And when her life is ripped apart by the shocking death of her husband and a disappearing act that appears to defy the laws of science - the very fabric of everything she believes in - there is only one person she feels she can turn to, who, in a world of "gods and spirits and magic and miracles can still fly the flag for common sense".

A grisly murder, the macabre history of a Catholic girls' school, a sinister local society, and a series of increasingly puzzling, interlocking clues form the backdrop to another weird and wonderful case for Creek and Joey, where this time they find themselves merely junior players, in an inquiry spearheaded by the flamboyant and indomitable Detective Inspector Gideon Pryke - an inquiry whose resolution will prove infinitely deeper and darker than any of them could have imagined . . .

We are delighted to be celebrating the life and work of the inspired and extraordinary comedian Dave Allen on BBC Two. He was an entertainer ahead of his time and an acclaimed actor too.

All I know at the moment is we're doing these three [episodes] and another three. I just don't know what there is beyond that.

You are in for an absolute stonker of a resurrection. It's going to be a treat. It's a terrific episode . . . I really recommend waiting. It's going to be great.

John has had a long career in the TV industry and was found to have hundreds of tapes of rare and missing bits of television within his collection, and these are being catalogued by our colleagues at Kaleidoscope, the classic television organisation.

He will join us on stage to share some of those gems with us and regale us with the fascinating – often hilarious – stories behind the productions. Expect more magical moments of missing music, segments of lost dramas, rare pop video footage, and other unmissable examples of the flotsam and jetsam of British television.

We hope to be joined on the night by some of the talents involved in the items screened.

We could never have fitted all three films into one long go because of everyone's availability. It's being flexible like this which allows us to keep making them.