TV & Movies
The Witchfinder’s Tim Key Is A Comic You've Definitely Seen Before
The British actor has appeared in some of our favourite TV shows.
A 17th century witch-infested England is the set of BBC Two’s new comedy The Witchfinder, written by the same duo behind Alan Partridge. Starring This Country’s Daisy May Cooper as a suspected witch, Thomasine Gooch, and Tim Key as Gideon Bannister, an opportunistic witch hunter, many will be wondering who exactly Tim Key is?
Well, Key may well seem very familiar to Alan Partridge fan for good reason. Key played the jokey lackey sidekick Simon Denton to Steve Coogan’s Partridge for more than a decade, featuring in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, Mid Morning Matters, and This Time. Before Partridge, Key was a part of the four-man sketch comedy group, Cowards, which he formed after returning to his home county of Cambridgeshire, after completing his studies at the University of Sheffield. The Cowards went on to create a sitcom by the same name, which the Guardian called “brilliant” at the time.
The actor and comedian has performed his comedy sets internationally, taking shows from Edinburgh to Melbourne, and has had minor roles in fan-favourite shows like Skins, Peep Show, and The End of the F***ing World. He’s even won a Perrier award for his stand-up, and has shared the stage with fellow comedian Daniel Kitson in Kitson’s play Tree, and Rufus Sewell and Paul Ritter in a revival of Yasmina Reza’s Art, both at the Old Vic in London.
During lockdown – or “the problems” as he referred to it in an interview with The Observer – Key turned his hand to poetry. He’s written five books, Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush being the latest, which he regularly shares snippets of via Instagram, @timkeypoet. The poems are also part of his new live show, Mulberry.
He’s also a “task consultant” on Taskmaster, helping soundboard ideas for the Channel 4 game show featuring comedians playing mind-bending games. And he’s given cameos to the likes of Saoirse Ronan, Sam Rockwell, and Adrien Brody in a new film comedy called See How They Run, slated for release in 2022. So even if The Witchfinder isn’t quite your thing, you will know Key’s work – directly or indirectly.
