The Witchfinder

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I watched all six episodes of new BBC Two comedy The Witchfinder, as if I could somehow magic up an improvement, to no avail. Written and directed by Neil and Rob Gibbons, who did the cracking This Time With Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan acts as script consultant on The Witchfinder), and starring Tim Key (Partridge's sidekick) and Daisy May Cooper (This Country), it's set in East Anglia in 1645, during the murderous persecution of women as witches. Which, obviously, is no laughing matter, and yet, in black comedy terms, there is no reason why it shouldn't be.

There aren't nearly enough jokes in The Witchfinder, and Key and Cooper struggle to find comic chemistry. Key's Gideon, a small-time witchfinder, trying to scale the career ladder, is (deliberately) low wattage, while Cooper's Thomasine - a local woman accused of sorcery, taken to be tried in Chelmsford - is a raging bonfire. Both are talented performers, but every scene they do together leaves Key reduced to cinders.

Elsewhere, it's teeming with talent (Daniel Rigby, Jessica Hynes, Julian Barratt, to name a few), but the whole thing is scuppered by the dated timidity of the approach. The Witchfinder could have been The Crucible restyled with a British eye-roll - a pithy, backdated skewering of 17th-century misogyny. Instead, it's a basic odd couple yarn played out against a backdrop of weirdly half-hearted femicide.

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The Witchfinder review

Not even a sprinkle of magic dust can make The Witchfinder funny.

TV review: The Witchfinder, BBC Two

I've been looking forward to The Witchfinder ever since it was announced. As comedies go you can't get a better pedigree. It is written by Neil and Rob Gibbons, the brothers who write Alan Partridge, and stars Tim Key - Sidekick Simon from Partridge and a million other shows - and Daisy May Cooper from This Country. And I doff my cap to everyone, it's ruddy brilliant.

The Witchfinder review

Expectations are high when you have a cast of comedy nobility, led by Tim Key and Daisy May Cooper, and a script from the writers of Alan Partridge. Yet The WitchfinderDaniel Rigby can't quite deliver on that promise, if not for a want of ambition.

The Witchfinder review

A comedy with so much wasted potential it makes you sad.

The Witchfinder review

Some of the finest comedy talents have produced something strangely mediocre.