In The Sinner and the Sandman, a retired local psychic inadvertently makes the most amazing and impossible prediction of his career.

As Creek and Polly strive to settle into rural life, they find their apparently serene country village is riddled with all manner of strange and disturbing undercurrents . . .

Trouble is already brewing in the nearby community centre - recently reopened after a major facelift - where a sordid sex scandal is about to break, casting a pall of gloom over the celebrations.

And at the vicarage, the arrival of a new baby is overshadowed by tales of a "weird hump-backed beast" that has been seen prowling in the garden by night and foraging through the rubbish bags for foodstuffs.

Even the Creek residence is struck by misfortune, as the prospect of a plague of deadly Japanese knotweed threatens to trigger widescale panic throughout the village. And after a whole slew of other unfortunate events, there are fears that some strange parochial apocalypse is about to dawn.

Jonathan Creek, meanwhile, finds himself paying a charitable call on the eccentric Mr Eric Ipswich - aka "The Amazing Astrodamus" - an ancient and reclusive former psychic magician who will shortly bring the village to a standstill by pulling off the most baffling act of clairvoyance in history.

And what is behind the macabre recurring dream that continues to haunt Creek's wife Polly, in which the kindly children's nursery character The Sandman is transformed into a dark and chilling figure of evil?

When a classic locked-room novel is turned into a West End musical, one of its stars falls victim to a real-life "impossible crime".

The Mystery of the Yellow Room, based on a 19th-century story by Gaston Leroux, is currently thrilling London theatre audiences with its enticing blend of music, romance and sizzling Gothic melodrama.

But events take a sinister turn one night when the show's glamorous singing sensation Juno Pirelli is found horribly stabbed inside a locked dressing room, from which no assailant could possibly have escaped.

No weapon or any other evidence of an intruder can be found, nor any rational explanation for the victim's wounds.

As the actress's life hangs in the balance, her producer and colleagues remain baffled. And attention once again turns to the lateral-thinking Jonathan Creek for a solution to the whole grisly puzzle.

But can Creek - now a happily-married man - even be persuaded to embark upon the investigation? As he and his wife, Polly, struggle to come to terms with a sudden personal tragedy, a series of dark and disturbing family secrets is about to emerge that will throw the couple's whole world into turmoil . . .

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 . . .

The new story has more than the usual amount of twists and surprises, and I'm very much looking forward to sleuthing again. I can't wait to join Sheridan Smith on set again. We're very lucky to have her. It's nearly 17 years since I first auditioned for the part. The duffle coat is always on stand-by, even if the periods of duffle-hibernation are quite long these days.

A new Creek script from David is always a joy, and this one is especially brilliant. With the dream team of Alan Davies and Sheridan Smith back on board, we're looking forward to delivering a really special Easter treat for BBC One audiences next year.