What sorcery is this? Somehow, like a usually brilliant wizard on an off day, the BBC has chucked some of the very finest talents into their cauldron of comedy – but produced something mediocre. Where The Witchfinder should be a potion of powerful trouble, it is merely quite amusing, not-bad television.
It is very strange, this, as if the producers stand accursed for some unidentified sins of the past – yet their track records are flawless. Tim Key, for example, plays the title role of Gideon, an ambitious but incompetent junior witchfinder in civil war England. Key is a very talented comedian, actor and writer, and the role ought to fit him like one of the big floppy Jacobean hats his character likes to wear to intimidate the common folk; but somehow Key doesn’t quite find Bannister’s formidable but nuanced ineptitude. Bannister is assisted by a willing but slow-witted wench by the name of Old Myers (Jessica Hynes), and acquires a murderous witchfinding rival, Hebble (Daniel Rigby) – two more major comedic talents who try to turn base metal into comedy gold, and end up with this OK sort of alloy.
