It’s such a fertile premise, so resonant with the occasions that you just surprise why we aren’t besieged with dramas, documentaries and podcasts set in and across the mid-Seventeenth century – time of civil warfare, plague and an equally toxic outbreak of misogyny that gave England literal witch-hunts.
However regardless of. It’s a time and a set of topics that’s simply as ripe for comedy – as black and bitter, you may count on, as a suspicious outdated crone’s brew – and right here comes one with as distinguished a solid and pedigree as you possibly can hope. The Witchfinder (BBC Two) is written by Neil and Rob Gibbons, who gave us the wonderful return of Steve Coogan as his most well-known character, within the pitch-perfect daytime tv spoof This Time with Alan Partridge (Coogan is listed as a script marketing consultant on the brand new present) and it stars – effectively, everybody you’d need it to, actually. It options Tim Key (Partridge’s hapless sidekick Simon, generally known as Sidekick Simon, in This Time and who has lengthy deserved the improve to predominant function that he will get right here, even when he does appear to be precisely half Coogan and half Ricky Gervais in content material and supply), Daisy Might Cooper (from the impeccable This Nation), comedy stalwart Jessica Hynes, Daniel Rigby (an unforgettable Eric Morecambe in 2011 and nice in every part since) and varied different acquainted faces that allow you to know you need to be in for a very good time.
Alas, that point by no means actually arrives. Key performs failing Norfolk witchfinder Gideon Bannister – we first meet him attempting on a brand new witchfinding hat, hoping it is going to change his fortunes – and Hynes his spirit-bolstering companion Outdated Myers. Rigby performs his extra profitable and bumptious rival Hebble and Cooper performs Thomasine Gooch, an single lady who's inevitably accused of witchcraft. She factors out that there are a lot of different single ladies round. “There’s one thing not proper about the best way you’re single,” comes the unanswerable reply.
If the programme featured extra of this sort of factor – satirical evocations of one other time and its insane contradictions (particularly in mild of what number of we discover ourselves in the course of at the moment) – it'd work. There may be loads of scope, if your interval effectively sufficient, to do a Blackadder and fill the script with intelligent, acute jokes (was Puritan ideology ever as effectively captured as in: “I sit on Nathaniel. Two spikes can be an extravagance!”?) that put some meat on daft bones. It has occasional high-quality prospers, however for essentially the most half The Witchfinder sadly appears as if it was put collectively by individuals who keep in mind a GCSE plague mission, have learn the Wikipedia entry for Seventeenth-century witchfinder Matthew Hopkins and hoped that may be sufficient.
There aren’t too many jokes of the extra easy type, both. The actors deliver as a lot as they'll to the elements, with out ever hamming it up, however traces reminiscent of “Scripture, scruples, scrutiny – the three Scr’s” are by no means going to boost rather more than a smile even with essentially the most generous-hearted viewers.
The story is skinny. The Witchfinder Normal’s right-hand man, John Stearne, visits Gideon’s village and is murdered, permitting Gideon to set off for his subsequent assembly within the hope of taking his place and eventually transferring up the ranks (“I might love three useless children – correct witchcraft.”) He takes the accused Thomasine with him to supply materials for a trial as soon as he will get there. Cooper’s Thomasine is actually the pathologically stubborn Kerry from This Nation with intelligence, which makes her a completely formidable drive and far-from-ideal companion for Gideon as they set off on a thwarted journey throughout the Civil Struggle-stricken countryside in the direction of their vacation spot. She ponders his pay construction, which grants him extra for a responsible verdict than a discovering of innocence: “Surprise if that’s the easiest way of doing it?”
However she, like Hynes (who I don’t suppose is given a single punchline – her each scene appears to finish earlier than anybody was moved to search out one), is woefully underused. Whether or not that is simply half and parcel of a programme whose each facet is underbaked and doesn’t appear to know how you can make greatest use of most of its items, or some manifestation of the enduring boys’-club nature of comedy writing and commissions, I don’t know.
Solely two episodes of the six have been out there for assessment, so possibly it tightens up, provides extra jokes, Blackadderish moments – some darkness within the mould of Julia Davis’s sitcom Hunderby can be equally welcome – and thickens the plot to reward the goodwill viewers deliver to initiatives with such pedigrees. I hope so. In the mean time, it’s a comedy with a lot wasted potential it makes me unhappy.
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