Witches of Essex is one of those television shows that could have been created working backwards from its title. “It sounds like Witches of Eastwick!” you can imagine a producer brainstorming. “Can we do anything with that?”
Yes, yes we can. We can put together a three-part documentary about the Essex witch trials, which saw hundreds of people – the majority of them women – accused of witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries. Crucially, we can hire everyone’s favourite Essex boy, Rylan (though less favourite since his comments on immigration saw more than 700 Ofcom complaints last month) to present it alongside Prof Alice Roberts.
“I’ve always been interested in history, but I had no idea Essex is steeped in horrific stories of persecution and death,” Rylan says to camera before the opening titles, in what can only be described as a mood killer.
If you were expecting a camp and cheeky take on Elizabethan history and the supernatural in time for Halloween, you could be slightly disappointed by Witches of Essex (Tuesday 14 October, 9pm, Sky History). It’s not that Rylan doesn’t add plenty of humour to proceedings (“There were a couple of witches then,” he quips about his youthful nights out in Chelmsford) but this is a real story about real women – many of whom were killed for little more than being a widow or falling out with a neighbour. Quite rightly, the series has at least some level of respect and gravity to it, albeit one that involves dramatic re-enactments featuring actors with panto-esque colloquial accents while wearing a variety of hats.
Each episode centres on a specific witch trial that took place in Essex, with Rylan and Alice opening a “cold case” of women accused more than 400 years ago, guided by original court documents and a team of historians and medical experts. Think Blackadder crossed with CSI plus a sprinkle of Philomena Cunk.
Much of the action takes place in an “incident room” – AKA a budget studio in which Rylan and Alice write on a board with a big pen above mugshots of the key characters. At one point, Rylan sticks a photograph of “Attorney General Gilbert Gerard” – one of the main prosecutors to implement Elizabeth I’s 1563 law criminalising witchcraft – and Alice nods in recognition. That she is actually recognising the actor Sky has hired to play Gilbert Gerard rather than presumably congratulating Rylan for discovering the earliest known camera roll on Earth is neither here nor there. This is history coming to life! We’re in the moment!
On paper, Rylan and Alice are a presenting duo that could have been made by AI. Or – more likely – a focus group trying to bring the 18- to 28-year-old demographic to the history channel. But they are a genuinely engaging team, balancing the not always easy tone of investigation into state-sponsored femicide and light entertainment. A tour of the modern-day Chelmsford courthouse that once saw women tried for witchcraft enables Rylan to respond to the detail that they would have shared the building with a market. “So you’d be getting tried for the death penalty and there’d be a cow in the background mooing?” “Possibly,” Alice nods, with a game straight face.
It’s all very slight, of course, offering more of an introduction to the topic than anything armchair historians would learn much from. But that is probably its strength. Everyone involved is almost visibly working to make what is an under-discussed and shameful period in history accessible (at one point, a lecturer from the LSE describes the first depiction of a witch on a broomstick as a phallic symbol of going “off to shag the devil”.) The ongoing point about ambitious politicians using fear against one group to get control over the populace feels painfully relevant for modern audiences.
When the actors re-enact a woman being hanged after being found guilty of witchcraft and Rylan places a photo of her corpse – with accompanying rope marks – on the board, you can’t help but feel moved. Rylan as the nation’s history teacher? As long as he starts with Windrush.
