Promising idea, impeccable cast but this sitcom is hard to love
The Witchfinder BBC Two ★★★★★
The Witchfinder is brought to us by two of the best comedy writers in the business, brothers Neil and Rob Gibbons (various Alan Partridge projects), while its star, Daisy May Cooper, was responsible for one the finest comedy shows of the past decade (This Country). The cast list includes the likes of Jessica Hynes and Reece Shearsmith. In other words, it has impeccable credentials. I wish I liked it more.
The idea is a good one: a comedy about 17th-century witchfinders, who are intrinsically absurd. Cooper plays Thomasine Gooch, a peasant woman accused of sorcery after an incident involving a neighbour’s pig. Tim Key, best known for playing Alan Partridge’s sidekick, Simon, is a pompous witchfinder named Gideon Bannister who is angling for a promotion and thinks Gooch may be his ticket.
He arrests Gooch, and the pair set off across England to the court of assize in Chelmsford. Cue plenty of odd-couple sparring on a meandering road trip. Key has said that the show was pitched to him as “like Midnight Run, but in the 17th century with witches and on horses”, but namechecking one of the funniest films of all time (starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin as a bounty hunter and his captive) is setting the bar impossibly high.
Cooper essentially re-does her This Country character – the bored delivery, the gurning expressions – although Gooch is a good deal smarter than Kerry Mucklowe. Key is more of a problem because his character is deliberately awful – this is cringe comedy – yet occupies most of the episodes. You will be as desperate as everyone on screen for him to shut up.
I’m not sure if all of the insults featured here were used in the 17th century, but Wikipedia does say that “tosspot” is of Middle English origin, so perhaps they were. Sometimes, a character will say something to Gooch, and Gooch will reply with a weary: “F--- off.” At other times, the dialogue could be from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (although it needs better characters than Gooch and Bannister to make it sing).
“You are charged with the crime of maleficium, or harm by sorcery.” “Well, which one is it?” “What?” “Maleficium or harm by sorcery?” “Maleficium is harm by sorcery.” “Would it not have been easier to say harm by sorcery?” “Quicker to say maleficium.” “Not if you have to explain it means harm by sorcery.” “I wasn’t to know that you didn’t know what maleficium was.” “Maybe next time just say harm by sorcery…” You see what I mean.
But it’s silly fun, and things perk up after the first episode when we get into the Civil War (the year is 1645) and the cast list expands. Almost every British comedy actor you’ve ever seen in a supporting role seems to have been drafted in. The show hits its stride midway through, when Bannister and Gooch have to pose as a married couple to escape puritanical Christian villagers in Dedham Vale.
“We tend to do hanging in the morning and then in the afternoon have a market – y’know, make a day of it for the family,” explains one local as he shows them around the square. This is when The Witchfinder works best: as a study of how barking mad this particular period of history could be.