Tim Key (Alan Partridge, Peep Show) and Daisy May Cooper (This Country) star in the 17th Century comedy based on the life and times of an ambitious (and admittedly clueless) Witchfinder. Assisted by Jessica Hynes and Andrew Rigby, this first six episode season has the whole of the BBC excited, it would seem, while the whole of rural England is being rocked by civil war.
Witchfinder has the same uncomfortable moments that you'd find in any Alan Partridge episode and Tim Key is brilliant at pulling this humour off. With Daisy May Cooper on board, who is someone who is already more than familiar with a leafy English village, to be fair, then you have two of the BBC's stable of comics that bounce off each other supremely well
"The Devil's daughter must be put to slaughter."
So considered casting aside, the script is funny throughout, if never hilarious and the BBC's habit of providing teeth-gratingly embarrassing historical figures with only a modicum of authenticity continues admirably here. This is perfectly harmless and unlikely to offend anyone, unless you have an enthusiastic yet humourless historian watching with you.
Comments