BBC documentary on the Pendle Witches and Jennet Device
I rarely ever watch tv these days but this was on iplayer. Simon Armitage explores the Pendle witch trials and the resulting effects the actions and words of Jennet Device had on the legal system of the time, and use of children as key witnesses in the courtroom. Documentaries like this often suffer from the fact that they are visual - yet lack visual content. The solution here was to overlay animation to illustrate the story of the witches and events of the final trial.
It was worth a watch primarily for appearances by Ronald Hutton - witchcraft guru (who hasn't changed or aged in the sightest!) and Diane Purkiss - author of The Witch In History. With stories like this it is all too easy to impose characters or judgements, when in fact we have few facts regarding the day to day life and the individual characters of the families involved apart from the trial records.
The Pendle Witches are infamous in their notoreity, yet their circumstance was clearly exploited to gain favour with James Ist - who suffering from persecution mania was convinced he was under attack from plotting witches and malevolent forces, even publishing his own witchcraft tract - Daemonologie.
Jennet was clearly a resentful and neglected character - but I did find the gloomy gothic illustrations which were decidedly Tim Burtoneque a little too much! Although intended to depict events I did feel that the entire programme would have worked better on the radio, the visual element removed it would have been far more atmospheric with just sound. There were various gloomy shoots of the Lancashire hills and fallen down buildings.
The documentary reminded me of Jeanette Winterson's novel The Daylight Gate - which uses the Pendle witch trials to create a fictional account - which I read a couple of years ago.
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